Dave Reviews: Furry Cash 'N' Guns

Goodcritters
You dirty rat! You actual dirty rat! Wash your fur, you're disgusting!

Goodcritters is a pseudo-bluffing game very much in the spirit of Cash 'N' Guns, but without the nerf guns and with slightly fuzzier gangsters. Each round there's a boss and a selection of loot set to be passed out among the criminals, and victory depends on your nerve, your ability to figure out what your opponents are doing, and how well you can maximize your take on every round. How the looting works is how the two games most differ.

One player starts as the boss. A number of loot cards are drawn equal to the number of players plus two, as opposed to the flat eight per round of Cash 'N' Guns. (There's a larger deck of loot cards with a Fuzz card slipped into the bottom third, so the end of the game is harder to predict.) Rather than players trying to brave their way into the heist so they can split the loot, the boss hands out the loot herself. The players get a vote, though; if more people vote no than yes, the loot is put back in the center and the next person becomes boss, passing out the same loot however he sees fit.

Of course, nothing's ever as simple as a vote.

After the loot is distributed, everyone gets an action. Voting yes or no are only two of the options. The others are to rob another player; guard against a robbery; or skim money off the top of the deck. Skimming only works if you're the first person to do it, which makes it great for the boss and a more chancy proposition the farther down the line you are. Robbery can only be done if you put your threat token in front of somebody else, which means if you do try and rob someone everyone knows who it will be already. It also means that if no one is threatening you, there's no need to guard yourself.

Therefore, if you're the boss, passing out the loot isn't a simple matter of making enough people happy with the split to keep you in charge. It's also a question of not giving people a reason to vote against you. Since not everyone has to use their threat token, the game ends up leaning more towards the politics of getting people to do what you want rather than calling their bluffs when guns are pointed at you, and the money split is a major part of that.

There are optional rules that involve bribes and payoffs, and each loot card as a type of loot attached to it (jewelry, paintings, etc.) which are currently irrelevant but should be put to use in future expansions. However, none of this affects the main drawback of the game: no catch-up mechanism. Not every game needs one, but it's pretty important in a game with a light tone that's designed to be an enjoyable experience.

For example, in Cash 'N' Guns, it can be difficult to make up ground if you're behind, but you do have an option—stand up and take part in every heist no matter how many guns are pointed at you. No, it may not work, but you can at least try. It's possible that other players were constantly throwing bullets at you, so that you never had a chance, but in most circumstances falling behind happens because you sit out a heist when the people threatening you were bluffing. Even if your decisions made perfect sense, at least it was your decisions that created the situation.

In Goodcritters, unless you're the boss, you have no control over the loot split. You can't make anybody give you anything. You can rob people, but that only gets you one random card from their stash (if they don't guard against it and rob from you instead). You can vote no, but even if it works, you don't make up any ground, you just stop everyone else from getting their loot. The balancing factor is supposed to be that if you're a good boss, you can keep the troops happy while also making more profit for yourself than you're giving to them, and it's better for the boss to give you money if you're behind because you'll vote for them while also being less of a threat. In theory, that should work, and with a group that knows how to play, it probably does. However, if everyone's just chucking loot splits in a way that will get them votes, it may keep going to the same people. If you're not among them, it leaves you pretty helpless, as you don't have the tools to do much about it.

There's also the question of what they plan to do with the loot types. In theory, there are ways to do set collection that function as a way to have fewer cards but more value, which may go a long way towards fixing the catch-up problem. But selling the game with aspects that don't come into play right away—especially when they're so prominently featured on the website—is some shenanigan behavior. When whatever expansion makes use of the loot types comes out, this game might be great. Not giving us that game is not OK.

Score: Six moderately valuable paintings out of nine in the stash.