Purrramid

• Designer: Renier Knizia 
• Publisher: Lucky Duck Games
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3PcZi55
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Your grandma loves cats – but she’s adopted so many that she can’t keep track of the mischievous furballs who refuse to settle down at bedtime.  Your mission? Help Grandma stack the kittens into the purrr-fect pyramid so they can finally get some shuteye. Roll dice, assign results to the board and decide: push your luck or play it safe? In this wacky, family-friendly game, you’ll need a combination of wit, strategy, and a little bit of feline furrrtune to claim victory.

Choose a side of the board to play on, and place wool tokens on each 8 space on the board.  Split up the 72 cat tiles evenly amongst the players.  Put the gold cat tiles near the board, and give the starting player the 5 dice.

On a player’s turn, the dice are rolled. Then one unoccupied space on the board must be covered, using dice that equal or add up to the number on the space.  If a space cannot be covered, the player busts and the turn immediately ends.  If dice are placed, the player then decides to continue or stop.  

When they choose to stop, the player then checks to see if his dice placement is legal: All spaces with dice must be connected AND all spaces with dice must be supported by the ground level, cat tokens or other dice.  If this happens, cat tokens are placed in each space with dice in them.  Note that 2 cat tokens are placed in “10” spaces, and 3 cat tokens are placed in “12” spaces.  Further, if you are able to place a cat token in a “8” space, you take the ball of wool there – this can be used on a later turn to re-roll and single dice throw.  If the die placement is not legal, then the player busts and the turn ends.

If you were able to place cat tokens, check to see if a bonus turn is earned – this happens in 2 occasions:  if all 5 dice were used for placement OR if you placed cats on three or more levels of the board.  In the Bonus turn, you must use one dice fewer than the preceding turn.

The game is won by the first player to place all of their cat tiles.  Interestingly, the game doesn’t end at this point?!  The winner now takes the Gold Cat tiles and continues to play.  The game continues until the entire board is filled or a second player uses all their cat tiles or the winner places all of the Gold Cat tokens.  The winner now gets to consult a chart in the rules to determine their winner’s title.

My thoughts on the game

Purrramid is a fun dice chucker – a genre which Dr. Knizia has made a number of games for – one that we recently reviewed was Kingdom of Dice – https://opinionatedgamers.com/2026/02/19/dale-yu-review-of-kingdom-of-dice/

This one is a bit different, having the players roll dice and then place them onto the board.  Each space that you cover allows you to place one of your cats, but if you ever make a roll where you can’t place onto the board – then you bust and lose your whole turn.  Further, if you are not able to place all your dice legally – you’ll also bust.  

Of course, the good Doctor knows how to entice you – if you are able to place all of your dice on a turn, you immediately get another turn! Sure, you’ll have one fewer die to use than in your previous turn, but an extra turn is surely a leg up on your opponents.  And, chasing this advantage will always have players trying to figure out the likelihood of getting an extra turn if they just roll one more time…

Early turns are mostly about maximizing the number of cats you can get onto the board. With the wide base of the ground level, it’s usually pretty easy to make combinations of your dice that will play to the board.  Keep an eye out for the 8 and the 10 spots as you should try to get them for yourself or at least try not to set up the next person with an easy chance to get them.  Getting the re-roll for an 8 or the double placement for the 10 are nice bonuses.

While we’re looking at the board, let me take a minute to note that the font on the board (making all the numbers into cat shapes) and the weird swirly dice with white text are both impossible to read.  As far as game UI goes, this is really bad for my eyes.  So hard to read the dice, and the numbers on the board are easy to mix up with other cat-numbers.

As the game progresses towards the end, your options each turn become less due to the purrramid shape of the board; and each turn becomes more tense.  Of course the triple spaces of the 12s are near the top, and this always leads to some exciting turns.

The end-game rules are quite bizarre.  Who wants to keep playing a game after a winner has been decided and none of the later actions can change who wins?!  I’ll admit that I’ve never played a full game of Purrramid as dictated by the rules because we simply stop playing once someone wins. Yes, I realize that might discredit the strength of my review, but if you can’t discern why the continuation of the game is essentially pointless, this review probably isn’t for you anyways. 

With the truncated version that we play. Purrramid is a nice family-level push your luck game with some interesting decisions to be made.  The ability to gain extra turns definitely incentivizes players to take risky rolls for big rewards.  To me, this is what makes the game.  People definitely remember the times when someone was able to take 4 turns in a row due to good rolling and daring decisions.  If I play this game again, I’ll definitely find some substitute dice.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it.
• Neutral.  Dale Y
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3PcZi55