Hungry Monkey

• Designer: Erik Andersson Sunden
• Publisher: Heidelberg
• Players: 2-6
• Age: 8+
• Time: 15 min
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Once upon a time, Hungry Monkey searched for his lost breakfast bean in the jungle. He asked the other animals for help, from Swift Sparrow to King Tiger, but they all ignored his pleas. Until Tiny Ant climbed into Tiger’s ear and ordered him to help. King Tiger was scared by the voice in his ear. He commanded all animals to look for the bean, and no one dared to refuse. Eventually, Swift Sparrow found the bean, and Hungry Monkey was finally happy.

Hungry Monkey is a card game where the goal is to get rid of your hand cards and collect beans. You have animal cards both in hand and in a face-down row. You must be the first to play all your cards, first from your hand and then from your card row. You have to play cards with the same or a higher number. You can trigger an effect with a powerful animal.  If you want to play multiple games you keep track of the scoring with Bean cards. The player with the most beans at the end of the last game wins.

The deck of 72 animal cards (6 each of 12 different animals) are shuffled and each player is dealt a hand of 3 cards.  Additionally, a display of 4 cards is placed face down in a row in front of EACH player.  The remainder of the cards are placed in the center of the table as a deck, and the Bad Kitty card is stood on its end next to the deck and then slid into the deck based on player count approximately where the corresponding line is on the card.

The goal is to play all of your cards – first from your hand and then from the row on the table in front of you.  On your turn, you first must play one or more identical cards to the animal pile.  If the cards come from your hand, you must play a card with the same or higher number than the card currently on top of the pile.  You could also choose to play a card from the top of the draw pile (and then later assess if the play is valid).  Finally, if the draw pile and your hand are empty, you can play a card from your facedown row onto the animal pile.  If you play an invalid card, you must take the ENTIRE pile and add it to your hand.

Then, if your play was valid, trigger the effect of the topmost card on the pile – unless you have made a Gang of Four.  A Gang of Four occurs when there are four or more cards on the top with the same rank (can include copies caused by a Hungry Monkey) – in this case, discard the whole pile, and then the active player draws back up to 3 cards and takes another turn.  Otherwise, resolve the effect of the card on the top of the pile – if it has one.  Seven of the twelve animals have an effect associated with it.  

To end your turn, draw back up to three cards.  If the Bad Kitty card is revealed, the draw pile is now considered empty and no further cards will be drawn in the game.  From now on, players only play with the cards they currently have. The winner will be the first player to play all of their cards (both in their hand and on the table).

If you want, you can play a series of four games, scoring bean cards based on your relative finishing position – they are drawn at random, and each card has between one and three beans on it.  The player with the most beans at the end of four games wins, though you can win immediately if you ever have more than 10 beans at any time.

My thoughts on the game

This is a game of waiting and waiting.  The first 70 percent of the game (before the Bad Kitty card is seen) is really just one giant setup round.  Though your end-game goal is to shed all your cards, until the Bad Kitty is seen, you’re always drawing back up to 3 cards in your hand even if you play them all… so, I find that I try to focus on finding out what my face-down cards are, and trying not to have fifteen cards in my hand when the draw deck disappears.

As a result, there are times in the first phase where I voluntarily take the cards in the pile into my hand because I’d rather not give up my “winners” in my hand.  As there is no limit to the number of matching cards that can be played on a turn, you can usually get your hand back down to a manageable size with just a few plays (also using some well timed card actions as well).

There is some interesting ebb and flow of cards in this phase as well, as only the piles ended with a Gang of Four or an 11 card are removed from the game; otherwise, they are played to the table and then sucked back up into the player hands only to be played again later. 

Once the Bad Kitty is seen – and I must say that I love this way of determining the end of the first phase – then the game starts in earnest – as now, you can finally play out your hand and get to the cards in your facedown row.  Generally people try to save their high cards to ensure they can get out – but this is the ideal time for your opponents to stick you with an 8 card, which requires you to play low and not high.  And, if you fail, you’ll have to pick up the whole current stack, and now you have to play through that whole hand again in order to get back to your face down row.

The artwork is very vibrant and appeals to me; though this opinion was definitely not shared by everyone I have played with.  The icons for the actions are fairly clear, and I’ve taken to leaving the last page of the rules face up on the table to use as a player reference.  

A one-off game is a decent ten minute filler, and that’s about the length of time I’d ever want to devote to Hungry Monkey.  The “full” game wants you to play 4 rounds, where you get dealt a random bean card (worth 1-3 pts) to start the game, and then draw other random scoring cards depending on how you finish.  That method of scoring is so Not for Me, and I guarantee you I’ll never play it that way.  But, it’s there for people who want to do it.  You know, play a game, and then draw some random cards so that your actual order of finish might not mean as much as being better at drawing random cards from the score pile.  Yay.

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor