Poo-ka-Boo is a game for 2-4 players, who play numbered cards, and place pegs on a game board. The aim is to create a straight line of 5 pegs.
Components: The board is a sturdy plastic peg board which, when folded, serves as a handy container for the other components. Pegs are provided in ziploc bags, and in my case, are blue and yellow. The game cards are numbered 1 to 99, and are fairly thin and flimsy. The backside of the cards is decorated with a fairly amateurish drawing of a bespectacled short-legged caveman gazing at a peg and holing something entirely unlike any game piece in his other hand. This elderly cave-game-dude seems to be frowning and thinking "OutWit!" according to the cartoon bubble... but he appears to be about to poke himself in the head with the peg he is holding. Rules are printed on the back of the box.
General Rules: Each player receives five cards as a hand. on their turn, a player lays down the card of his choice, places a peg in the corresponding peg-hole, and draws a new card. When playing with four players, 2 players operate as a partnership.
Sadly, after you play one game of Poo-ka-Boo, you may wish you had poked yourself in the eye, just like the Poo-Ka-Boo guy.
This game resembles "Sequence" in general form and rules, but is missing sequence's "extensive" (sarcasm) player interaction and tactics. In Poo-ka-Boo, unlike sequence, there is only one card in the deck which coresponds to a single peg-hole on the board. Players cannot discard unwanted cards, and there are no jokers. Essentially, this game is a non-game: there are no choices, and there is a complete lack of player ability to affect the game play or the outcome. The board is layed out in a spiral circle of numbers, starting at the middle, but this does not affect game play in any way: numbers could just as easily have been layed out in logical rows. The chosen configuration simply makes searching for the correct number time consuming and frustrating. Because players cannot ever discard unwanted cards, the player's hand is useless other than as a delaying tactic for the inevitable: they might as well just draw the top card and place the corresponding peg. Because the draw-pile is face down and the top card is always drawn, no control can be exerted over which card is chosen, and thus no brilliant blocking play of the opponent's position is possible: you can block if you have the corresponding card, but why bother? Just keep it in your hand, as the opponent can never play in that peg hole anyway!
Finally, the game does not have a defined ending: the only way to win is for your random draws to miraculously present you with a five-in-a-row: I reiterate, there is NO choice in which cards you get to draw. This leads to the inevitable question of what should be done when all cards are exhausted and all holes filled... but noone has yet won?
I find it hard to believe that this game was ever playtested, and only the fact that I have a copy sitting in front of me here convinces me that this was not some sort of awful joke. Thank goodness I bought this at a flea market... I think the few coins I spent were still too many.
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Posted Mon Mar 7, 2005 1:34 am
