Haunted Mouse

• Designer: Jonathan Cox
• Publisher: Bezier Games
• Players: 2-5
• Age: 12+
• Time: 30 mins
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4dAliQY
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Looming high above a forgotten village stands the remains of a forgotten cathedral. On cloudy nights such as this, only the flickers of a few candles light the empty aisles, bringing warmth to the five sole inhabitants: Parm, Brie, Gouda, Jaq, and Colby. With only embers of light to shield them from darkness, the purring wind wraps and winds its way through the pews, fueling the fears of our five little mice. Spine-chilling specters of carnivorous creatures haunt their dreams. Images of cat claws, glistening snake fangs, and ominous owl eyes lurk in every corner of their minds.  Will their fears bring endless hours of restless sleep or will they shed these ghastly nightmares? Be the first mouse to wake up and grab the most cheese from the kitchen. As we all know: the early mouse gets the cheese!

Haunted Mouse is a ladder climbing/shedding game where mice not only shed their own fears (cards), but can use the fears of others! After all, why work hard shedding your own fears when your opponents can do it for you? The earlier you get rid of all your fears, the more cheese you get! Be the first mouse to complete their cheese wheel wins the game and never goes hungry again!

The 72 card deck is made up of four suits, numbered 1 to 9, with 2 copies of each.  This deck is shuffled and each player is dealt a hand of 8 cards.  Players can pick up their hand, but they CAN NOT rearrange the cards.  The remainder of the deck is placed in the center of the table and 1 or 2 cards are flipped up as Public Bait cards.   The players now secretly and simultaneously choose one card from their hand and place it face down on the table; when all have chosen, these are revealed as Personal Bait cards.  The process is then optionally repeated by all players who have the least amount of Cheese (this is everyone at the start of the game!) to display a 2nd Personal Bait card.

On your turn, you have three options: Play a Meld, Draw a Card, or Set a Trap.

Play a Meld – play a combination of cards from your hand and your Bait cards.  They can be Sets (all the same number) or Runs (cards in sequential order).  You must take adjacent cards from your hand, and remember you cannot rearrange the order.  You can add in any number of Bait cards from any source, and they can go anywhere within your Meld.   If you are the first person to play (i.e. you are the Leader), you can only use your own hand and your own Bait cards.  Otherwise, you must play a Meld that is stronger than the previously played Meld, meaning it is either the same size but higher ranks OR it is exactly one card larger than the previously played combo.  That is, any four card combination could be played on top of a three card.

Draw a Card – Draw a card from the deck, the Public Bait or any other player’s Bait.  You can not choose your own Bait.  Place the new card anywhere in your hand.  If  you drew the Public Bait card, draw a new card from the deck to replace it.  Now, you may play a new Personal Bait card from your hand. If you currently have no Bait cards, you MUST play one now.

Set a Trap – You can play a set of 4 cards with the same rank but all different suits OR a run of four cards all of the same suit.  This discards the previously played meld as well as itself, and the player of the Trap immediately gets to take another turn.

When a player runs out of cards – that is no cards in their hand and no Bait cards left in front of them – they now collect Cheese based on their order of finish.  The current meld remains in play and the rest of the players continue playing.  A player can go out if their final card is Bait and is taken by another player. They are considered out before the active player even plays their combination.  When only one player is left, the round ends.  That last player collects no cheese and is the leader for the next round.

The game ends immediately when someone collects 7 pieces of cheese.  It is not possible to tie.

My thoughts on the game

There have been a lot of climbing/shedding games to land on my gaming table in the past few years, and the amount of variation amongst them has been impressive.  While the general idea of the climber/shedder remains, there are small tweaks in the rules that can lead to big changes.

In Haunted Mouse, there are some familiar shedding themes.  The increasingly popular mechanism of not being able to change the order of your cards in your hand is present.  Haunted Mouse also allows you to only play the same size combination or exactly one more card.

However, the concept of the split hand (closed hand plus face-up bait) is new, and it offers a lot of strategic maneuvering.  While all the cards are still considered to be in your hand, you can offer up cards that you think other players will use, thus getting them out of your hand without you even having to take a turn to do so!

It’s a great place to offer a single high card that doesn’t match other things in your hand.  It is quite likely that one of your opponents can use it in a combination.  The bait is also a nice place to allow you to re-organize your hand by removing cards which are annoying in the middle of a playable combination in your hand – remove the card from your hand and leave yourself with something much better!

As the hand end draws near, you will also have to be aware that you might be forced to play a card as Bait, even if you don’t want to!  And then, you run the risk of someone else taking the card out of your hand and playing it before you can use it yourself…

The rules are all summarized nicely on the small player board which also acts as a receptacle for your cheese wedges.  I don’t know why but my brain has been programmed by years of Trivial Pursuit to assume that a circle can only be completed by exactly six wedges… But, you’ll need 7 wedges to win a game of Haunted Mouse.

As with Cat in the Box, Bezier has also produced a super nice stuffie that complements the game.  We did request a “review mouse” at Origins, and I am impressed with the quality.  The fur is nice, and the hands really clasp together strongly.  The mouse also complements the Cat in the Box stuffie, and both of these now sit on a shelf in my game closet :)

Haunted Mouse offers a nice breath of innovation to an increasing crowded lineup of climber/shedder games, and is well worth a try if you’re looking for a new one to try.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Erik Arneson
• I like it. John P, Dale Y
• Neutral.
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4dAliQY