Getting a group of friends together to play a new board game is something that often is quick to spark new memories. Be it an entertaining experience or a letdown, it is always going to be something you can bring up together. That said, a new game from Ravensburger called Goats’ Day Out is one that will likely be a hit-or-miss for your group. While it definitely has some appealing and simple concepts, it may be a bit too simple for some.

What’s In The Box

Inside the box is everything you need to play. The game is made for up to 5 players or teams, and so you will find 5 different goats, 5 similar street panels, a score tracker board, 5 playable pieces, and a few punch boards with all the various items that the goats eat during their day out. Once you get everything out for the first time you play, you will want to have a bag or something nearby for when you put it away. If you don’t, the pieces are going to be loose in the box following the first game.

Gameplay

It’s pretty straightforward. You split all of the eaten pieces onto the street panels with each item selected by a player one at a time. In other words, you take one piece to put on your street panel and then wait until all other players pick a piece for their street panel before picking your next one. Once you have that setup, each player picks a different goat as their play board. Then, simply put the point tracker in the center where all players can reach.

Once you have everything set up, the first player picks one item from the player next to them and puts it on their goat board. After they go, everybody else will do the same, picking from the player next to them in the same direction. Once all the eaten items have been picked up from the streets and put on the board, you now add up the score that you managed to rack up.

When counting the score, you have to take the items type into account, along with whether the item has a bite taken out of it or not. You get a better score by having items of a similar type next to each other. Other than the items themselves, there is a bonus for filling in the shaded parts of the goat board.

Now that you all have your scores, move your point trackers on the board, empty your goat into the street panel (making sure everybody has the same amount of pieces in their street panels), and pass the goat board you are using to the player you were taking items from. You then repeat the steps until someone reaches the goal.

What It Could Have Done Better

When you break the game down, it feels a lot like Tetris with extra steps. There are a lot of games out there that are variations of that classic game and I wasn’t expecting this game to be played like this initially. When I think of Goats’ Day Out, I think of chaos and running amok. Instead, we got a think-tank organizer. So, I’m not so sure it was a great theme to go with, although I get the joke that goats will eat anything.

Also, there were a lot of pieces for this game. It would have been nice to use the pieces in a more creative way and give the players more to do in the game.

Verdict

Goats’ Day Out is a simplistic board game that is likely to be more entertaining the more people participate. Unfortunately, I did find the game to be more of a hassle to set up, and the fun I get out of it. It is a hard one to put a flat negative score on, as I believe this game would be fun to the right audience, but I honestly don’t see this game leaving the shelf again anytime soon.