Designer: 宮野 華也 (Kaya Miyano)
Artist: 別府さい (Sai Beppu)
Publisher: allplay
Players: 2-4
Time: 15 minutes
Age: 6+
Review copy provided by allplay
Reviewed by Jonathan Franklin (5 plays at 2-4 players)

Panda Panda is an an adorable and unusual card game. Originally called Cat Poker in Japan, it is now part of the allplay line of small box card games, even smaller boxes than Sail or Mountain Goats. I have put them with my Oink games to give you a sense of size.

One of the things I like most about card games is that coming in a small box, they can surprise you as being a larger game, a more curious game, or a wonderful riff on a classic. Panda Panda is in the curious, fun, and notable category.

The deck is unusual, in that cards each have a single letter, from 10 Letter A down to only 1 Letter G. The winning condition is to have one of many combinations of cards in your hand at the start of your turn.

It is not a trick-taking, shedding, or climbing game. Instead, players sequentially take turns until one declares victory by having one of the winning combinations. This is the first interesting twist, as each player starts with five cards, but the winning combinations range from two to seven. While one player is trying to shed cards, another is trying to expand their hand for one of the larger combos.

On your turn, you have only three choices, discard a card to your discard pile, draw a card from any player’s discard pile (including your own), and draw a card from the center face-down pile. There is no central discard pile, just each player’s discard pile.

The second twist in the game is that if a player discards an A card, each player must pass a card to their left. This may break up a winning hand because one of the cards needed for the combo has to go to another player and you might not get the right one in return. Secondarily, you may not draw from any discard pile topped with an A, so once it is played, it is gone.

Play continues until one player has won twice. This means in a three-player game, you will play between two and four hands, which breezes by. While this sounds like a fun game of playing the odds, it takes quite a bit more vigilance than many other card games. You need to know how many cards each player has to know what might or might not help them if passing to them. In addition, if they have two cards in hand, you hope to have an A to break up their winning combo, but that might mean breaking up your winning combo to do so.
Easily played in a casual context, the Sai Beppu card art is adorable and the colors are gentle but not weak pastels. Since there are no numbers, the cards are quad-indexed with the letter and the As all have the little pass symbol, so the game is both color-blind and leftie friendly. In addition, the G is gold embossed, like the 7s in nana, so it is lovely. A slight downside is depending on how the dealer holds the cards when dealing, they might be able to feel the G.

I think the player aids are great, as they show the winning combos and are used for tracking whether you have 0 or 1 victory so far. Our games have run a bit longer than 15 minutes, but not more than 30. Conversation during the game can be chatty along with groans when an A is played. If players are not watching how many cards the others have or don’t have A cards, you can almost see the end coming, but that is honestly fine, as that is the sort of game it is.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers:

Larry (1 play): I like the basic idea, but I’m not sure about the execution. It seems as if you’re usually dealt a winning hand at the start and just have to discard down to it. The trouble is, there’s so many “A” cards (which require all players pass a card) that you’re forced to delay this process, which was more frustrating than skillful. It just feels very chaotic. Maybe I should have chosen a different strategy, but all that passing led me to give this a pass.

Ben (4 plays): I played it enough to realize the beginner strat is to pair down cards and so this is also a strategy you can employ. It does not overstay its welcome at a mere 15 minutes and is quite easy to get out and put away. I think what I enjoy most is how many times a winner is declared when the next or another person at the table is ready to win.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers
I love it!
I like it. Jonathan F., Ben B
Neutral. Larry
Not for me…