A copy of Mountain Goats and The Big Mountain expansion was provided by AllPlay for review purposes.
The last time I talked about Mountain Goats, I framed it in comparison to Can’t Stop. On the surface that comparison makes sense, both games involve rolling four dice and moving pieces up numbered tracks. But the more I’ve played Mountain Goats, the more I’ve come to realize how much of a disservice that framing actually does to it. The similarities are superficial. Underneath, they’re trying to create very different experiences.
Can’t Stop is one of the purest push-your-luck games ever designed. The entire experience revolves around that moment where you ask yourself if you should roll the dice one more time, knowing full well you might bust and lose all the progress you’ve made. The tension comes from risk and greed. Mountain Goats, on the other hand, isn’t really about that kind of gamble at all. If I had to place it in a category, it feels much closer to a light area control game. Yes, you still roll four dice every turn, but the way you use those dice is far more flexible. If you roll a four and a five, you can combine them to climb the ten track twice, or push the five track four times, or split them up and advance on both. There’s none of the rigid pairing that defines Can’t Stop, and because of that freedom you’re rarely stuck without options.
That flexibility means you’re almost never losing entire turns. Sure, sometimes the dice won’t cooperate. Like, you might be desperate for a nine and just can’t seem to roll the right combination, but there’s almost always something productive you can do with what you’ve rolled. The game itself is made up of six numbered tracks, and each player is trying to climb those tracks with their goats. For most of the climb nothing particularly dramatic happens. As long as you’re somewhere along the track and not sitting at the summit, you aren’t earning points, but you’re also completely safe. No one can block your movement, knock you down, or interfere with your progress in any way.
That is, until you reach the top.
Once your goat hits the summit of a track, that position starts generating points for you every time you commit dice to that number, and will keep doing so for as long Mas you remain there. The catch, of course, is that the summit of each track only has room for one goat. The next player who manages to climb to the top immediately knocks your goat all the way back down to the bottom. That’s where the real tension in Mountain Goats lives: sitting comfortably at the top of the mountain, collecting points while watching the other players inch closer to you from below with daggers held between their teeth.
Those moments can get surprisingly dramatic. It can feel quite tense, sitting at the summit when only one or two points remain in the stack, while two opponents are parked on the space just below you. Every roll of the dice, both yours and your opponents, has small prayer whispered that they don’t hit the number they need. When they miss the roll, and you manage to drain the last points from the pile before they can take your place, it feels fantastic. It’s not a huge, bombastic victory, you won’t be jumping out of your chair and shout your victory, but you surely will exhale out your nose, smugly satisfied that your gambit paid off.
There are also bonus points available for players who manage to reach the summit of every single track at least once. Completing that full set awards a nice chunk of points, though in practice I’ve often found it more efficient to focus on one track and squeeze as much value out of it as possible. Spreading yourself across the board means investing multiple actions just to climb into position, and sometimes that effort feels like it could have been better spent reinforcing a single scoring engine.
The Big Mountain expansion introduces another wrinkle to the decision-making. It adds a separate mountain track off to the side with spaces numbered from eleven to twenty-four. Whenever you want, you can commit one of your goats to that mountain by climbing onto one of those spaces, but doing so requires combining dice in larger values to reach those numbers. At the end of the game, the player who sits the highest on that mountain earns a sizeable point bonus.
There’s an important catch, though: you don’t get extra goats for this track. If you want to send one to the Big Mountain, you have to remove it from the main game. This is supposed to create an interesting little risk-reward moment. Maybe you’d rather sacrifice the chance to keep scoring on a regular track in order to secure those endgame points. In theory, it sets up a tug-of-war between short-term scoring options and long-term positioning.
In practice, what often happens is the big mountain lays empty until one or two of the point piles on the main board run out entirely, those goats naturally migrate over to the Big Mountain because they no longer have anywhere else to score. Part of me wishes there were a rule preventing goats from leaving the summit for the big mountain once they’ve reached it, just to create a stronger push-and-pull between staying put for points and abandoning that position for the endgame race. Still, even without that tension dialled up, the expansion fits so nicely into the base game.
The Big Mountain is the kind of expansion I immediately folded into the base game and haven’t looked back since. It adds very little rules overhead but solves a niggling little pain points that I had with the base game. Like, What are you supposed to do when one of the tracks runs out of points, what happens when your dice rolls don’t line up with the available tracks, especially if you roll four 6’s. The Big Mountain gives those scenarios a natural outlet, and because of that it feels a lot less like an add-on, and more like something that has been there all along.
One small surprise about Mountain Goats is the physical footprint it creates on the table. The box itself is tiny, a small square only slightly thicker than most card game boxes, but much smaller in length and width. You might reasonably assume that means the game itself would be similarly compact, but you’d be mistaken! Once you lay out the twenty cards that form the mountain tracks, the game demands more table space than its box would suggest. It’s not quite the portable pub or airplane game that the packaging might imply. This isn’t really a complaint so much as an observation. It’s a small box that stores everything neatly, and respects my limited shelf space, and then sprawls into a surprisingly large play area once the game begins. My expectations were simply shaped by other small-box games that tend to stay small once they hit the table.
Even with that slightly larger than expected footprint, it’s hard to not fall in love with Mountain Goats. The whole game takes between 20 and 30 minutes, serves some emotional highs and lows, the art direction is bright and playful, and the rules are easy enough to teach in just a few minutes. It’s light without feeling trivial. For such a small package, it manages to create a lot of memorable little moments, like the time you managed to drain the 6 pile before anyone could kick you off the track, locking them all out of the set bonuses for the entire game. I suspect my partner wanted to literally push me off the mountain after that game!
Let me start by saying that I adore the theme of Rebel Princess.
Classic fairy-tale princesses have generally always been trapped in a fairly grim narrative box. No matter how brave, clever, or capable they are, their ultimate “win condition” tends to be the same: get married. Roll credits. Rebel Princess turns that expectation on its head. In this game, the princesses have decided they’re done with proposals, done with princes, and absolutely not interested in settling down just because the story says they should.
What makes this theming so interesting is that it’s not just a coat of paint. The theme of Rebel Princess is built around rejecting marriage, and that idea feeds directly into the trick-taking gameplay in a way that feels intuitive. I absolutely love it when a theme informs gameplay.
Rebel Princess is a trick-taking game inspired by Hearts. If you’ve played Hearts, you’ll already understand most of the game, which is to avoid taking certain cards, because those cards will give you points. And points are bad. In Rebel Princess, those points take the form of proposals. Each prince card represents a proposal, and the goal of the game is very simple: avoid proposals at all costs.
The deck is divided into four suits, numbered one through ten. One of those suits is the Prince suit, and that’s where the trouble lies. Each prince offers exactly one proposal to the player who takes the trick containing that card. Take a prince, take a proposal. The player with the least proposals wins the game. Also, just for a bit of an added twist, the green 8 is the Frog Prince, who is worth 5 proposals when he’s won.
So far, so familiar. But Rebel Princess is so much more than a straight retheme of Hearts. It layers on a couple of systems that dramatically reshape how the game feels.
The first and most important addition is player powers. Each player takes a princess tile at the start of the game. Each of these princesses are classic literature (or if you’re a millennial like me, from the Disney movies of our childhoods). Cinderella, Pocahontas, Mulan, and many more. Each princess comes with a unique ability that modifies how you can play the game. Some let you break suit rules, some let you manipulate tricks after they’re played, and others invert the hierarchy of numbers for a specific hand.
These powers do a fantastic job of pushing Rebel Princess beyond a purely reactive trick-taking experience. You’re no longer just counting cards and tracking suits, you’re actively planning around when to use your power, who it might hurt, and how it will interact with the rest of the table. I had one game where I successfully baited out the prince of frogs, only to swap the card I played for a much lower one, sticking that player with a nasty 5 proposals. Bam, gottem.
That being said, this is also where one of my small hesitations lives. The princess powers don’t all feel equally impactful. In my plays, some princesses use their abilities maybe once or twice per game, saving them for some dramatic moments. Potentially, other princesses can forget what your power is, because you’ve gone 3 rounds without using it. Others seem to fire almost every single round. That imbalance doesn’t break the game, but it’s noticeable, especially once players become familiar with the full roster. I suspect experienced groups will gravitate toward certain princesses more than others.
The second major addition to Rebel Princess are the round cards.
At the start of each round, a round card introduces a new rule that changes how the entire hand will play out. Often this begins with a card-passing phase: pass one to three cards to your left or right. Already, that small change can dramatically reshape your hand and your plans.
Then comes the twist. Maybe this round if you manage to take no tricks at all, you immediately take five proposals. Now you HAVE to win at least one, right? Another round card could be something like, every three card you capture this round is worth negative three proposals, suddenly turning low cards into high-value targets. These rules force you to re-evaluate what “good” play even looks like from round to round.
Together, the princess powers and round cards make Rebel Princess far more dynamic than a standard trick-taking game. You probably won’t fall into a single dominant strategy. What worked last round might be actively dangerous in the next. That constant change is what makes the game feel fresh even after repeated plays.
If you’ve played a lot of classic trick-taking games, Rebel Princess turns so many of the genre’s stables on it’s head. High cards are dangerous. Winning tricks is often bad. Suddenly, you’ll find yourself desperately trying slough off your highest cards and clinging to low numbers so you can dodge those pesky suitors entirely.
There are few feelings in trick-taking more satisfying than surprising your opponents. Those moments when someone thinks they’re going to get away scott-free, only for you to stick them with 3 princes, or even better, when you suddenly play off-suit and drop that 5 proposal frog prince right into someone’s lap.
The most dramatic moment of all though, is shooting the moon.
If you manage to take every single prince and the Frog Prince, you flip the script entirely and score negative ten proposals. Pulling this off feels incredible. And the tension, as you take prince after prince, the table growing the realization that you just might pull it off, and they’re powerless to stop you…
It’s one of those moments that players will remember long after the game ends.
I’ve never played the original Hearts, but I have played a lot of trick-taking games over the years, and Rebel Princess comfortably sits among the better modern entries in the genre.
The production helps, too. The card art is charming and expressive. While every card doesn’t have unique art, each suit has its own full-card illustration, which is lovely enough. The princesses tiles themselves are full of that rogueish personality that gives the game it’s name.
With a large roster of 12 princesses and 26 round cards, Rebel Princess has a lot of variability baked in. Mixing that with the natural replayability of trick taking games, you’ll be exploring new combinations of powers and rules often.
In the end, Rebel Princess is a smart, satisfying twist on a classic formula. It’s approachable for players familiar with Hearts, but deep enough to reward repeated plays. It manages to be playful, mean, thematic, and tactical all at once. That’s not an easy balance to strike.
I give Rebel Princess a full recommendation. If you enjoy trick-taking games and are looking for one that both respects tradition and gleefully rebels against it, Rebel Princess is well worth your time.
Imagine this scenario. You’re at your friendly local game store. You’ve just picked up a hot new game off the shelf. You flip it over to check out the back, as if you don’t already know everything about the game from the media blitz on BGG/social media, let alone your own research. You feel an overwhelming urge to buy the game, add it to your collection. Just think how excited your game group will be when they hear you’ve picked up a brand new game! But in the back of your mind, something’s itching. Do you really need a new game? Don’t you have 7 other games on your shelf of shame/opportunity? Never mind the dozens of games you bought, punched, learned, and played only once.
You love board games. You’ve played hundreds. You’ve backed dozens of Kickstarters, you read rules just for fun, you’ve joined online board game communities to talk about your favourite games… And yet… there they are. The games you genuinely liked, experiences you enjoy, just, sitting on your shelf. Unfinished legacy campaigns, half-explored systems. Expansions you’ve folded into the base box that you never got around to actually playing.
My question is: Why do board gamers keep abandoning games they actually like?
Or perhaps more bluntly: Why are we always chasing the cult of the new?
Allow me to pontificate.
Completion Bias
Humans hate unfinished things. This isn’t a gamer problem, it’s a brain problem. Psychologists have known for nearly a century that we remember unfinished tasks more vividly than completed ones. It’s why a half finished campaign nags at you more than the game you’ve already “got your money’s worth” from.
Board games are especially good at triggering this completion bias:
Campaigns with branching paths
Expansions that promise to “fix” or “deepen” the base game
Modular content you haven’t tried yet
Fan expansions or community made variants
Expert strategies that only become clear after 10+ plays
The completion bias gets cranked up to 11 when companies like Queen Games put numbers on the sides of their boxes. It’s brutally unsatisfying to look at a shelf of games and see the spines labelled “1…2…4…”. Where’s 3? You have to get number 3!!
Some gamers aspire to acquire the entire catalogue of their favourite designer. I fell into this trap for a while, seeking out every Vladimir Suchy game possible. But in the end, I had 8 different games and only really enjoyed playing 2 of them.
Loss aversion is absolutely at play here. You’ve put in the initial investment to acquire a game or a series, so adding the latest game or an expansion is comparatively cheap. In the worst scenario, a game or expansion doesn’t get reprinted so you need to add it to your collection now before it disappears, as if it’s a rare Pokemon in the Safari Zone.
The Infinite Release Problem
There are more board games coming out now than at any other point in the hobby’s history. Crowdfunding, print-on-demand, small and indie publishers, solo designers, anyone and everyone can put a game out into the world. Which is great! But it’s also overwhelming. It feels like every single week there’s a “must-play” new game, two hot new Kickstarter games, and a massively popular designer releasing a new game that has the whole board game media sphere in a tizzy.
And board gaming is a social hobby, even when you mostly play solo. We want to be part of the conversation or cultural zeitgeist. We want to know what everyone else is talking about. We might want to avoid spoilers, hot takes, and the creeping sense that we’re falling behind. So you shelve your old favourites, or any unplayed games you already own temporarily so you can “just try” the new thing. You buy the hot game, post a picture of it on social media or to your board game groups chat, and say to yourself “I’ll definitely learn how to play this before next game day”
Unfortunately, the act of buying a game and posting on social media gave your brain a sweet, sweet dopamine hit, and if we’re being honest, learning rules is pretty boring. What’s even more boring is going back to that old game that you promised yourself to play last week.
Novelty Is a Hell of a Drug
On the subject of sweet dopamine hits, new games are front-loaded with dopamine. The first play is full of discovery, learning the systems, discovering the strategies, talking about what you can do better next time! This feeling is powerful, but it doesn’t last forever. And when you compare a game that you like, with a whole new game, it’s so easy to pick the new game. After all, the new game might be your new favourite game of all time! The new game can be anything and everything, while the old game… you already know what the old game has to offer.
Another frustration point is if one player at your table is particularly good at a game. Do you want to spend your one game night a week struggling against someone who’s probably going to win anyway? A new game offers a level playing field, with everyone at the table discovering strategies at the same time.
Too Much Content Can Kill Love
Here’s where this really hits modern board gaming. Big games now feel designed to be endless. This is more of a problem with crowdfunded games where the all-in tier is $800 and is shipped in 3 waves. I’m talking Final Girl, or Bloodborne, or Marvel United, or any of those big crowdfunding projects. With modules, expansions, campaigns, and just piles and piles of content. So much that you could play this game for every game night and still have fresh stuff to play when the expansion hits Kickstarter the following year!
Sometimes having too much content can push players away. When you have so many different permutations of how a game can be played, with interlocking modules or optional expansions, you can become paralyzed. Which module should you start with, which combination is the optimal way to play? Does character X play well against mission Y? This turns a game night into homework. And my high school grades should tell you, I hate homework.
The Fantasy of the Perfect Play
Another quiet trap: holding games off for the “right moment.” Maybe you don’t want to play Zoo Vadis until you have at least 5 players, or Tainted Grail is best at one or two players, so you need to wait for a game night that suits that. Maybe you don’t want to play a deduction game while you’re tired, or start a complex game when you only have 2 hours before one of your players HAS to leave. You don’t want to play a certain game until the conditions are ideal.
Postponing games you’re excited about cools your enthusiasm. And while your enthusiasm is cooling-off on one game, there’s a shiny new game right around the corner, begging you for your time and money.
Why Do We Chase the New?
At the end of the day, I think it’s important to state that abandoning games doesn’t make you an irresponsible person. Board games are not obligations, they’re not self-improvement tools. You don’t owe a game anything just because you bought it. I do think it’s worth noticing how often we confuse starting something new with doing something meaningful.
The cult of the new always keeps us moving, keeps us active and engaged in our favourite hobby, but it’s not always engaging in a deeper or more meaningful way. If you’re like me, once the dopamine of buying a new game, watching the shipping tracker inch closer to your door every day, then pulling off the shrink wrap and punching the pieces out while imagining what it’s going to be like to play this game wears off, you just feel vaguely unsatisfied. Some of the arguments above might be why.
If you’ve been feeling disconnected with your hobby, or missing the joy you once held with cardboard, I think the trick to reinvigorating your hobby time isn’t by buying a new game, but it’s getting back to the classics. Playing the games that made you fall in love with board games in the first place. When was the last time you played Carcassonne, Pandemic, or Agricola? Those are still amazing games! You can plop them onto the table and have a great night with them, right now!
I think cult of the new isn’t really about games, but about feeling connected. When the media we consume is always showing us a new thing, it’s pretty natural to want to be a part of that conversation. But in the end, if you aren’t playing games, then you’re just engaging in wanton consumerism, and that’s not very fun at all.
Disclaimer: A copy of Perch was provided by Inside Up Games for review
Hey, do you want to play that bird game? No, not Wingspan, the other one! The area control game! No, not Root, the one with just birds!
Right off the bat, the cover art of Perch sets a tone. At first glance, it looks like it will be a peaceful game. A twilight scene featuring a menagerie of birds milling about on branches amongst the green shrubs. But looking closer, you’ll notice that all these birds have angry eyebrows. There are more birds than branches, and control of those branches is the only thing that really matters to them. They’re willing to claw and peck their way to control here.
Perch is an area control game for 2 to 5 players, designed by Douglas Hettrick, with art by Ari Oliver, and published by Inside Up games in 2025. Perch casts players as a colour of bird and tasks them with earning the most points possible over 5 rounds. Each round players will take two birds of their colour, and pull two more birds out from a bag as their options for the round. Then, turn by turn, players will place one of the birds they control onto the various tiles on the table. Once everyone is done placing their birds, each tile is evaluated for majority. Whoever has the most birds on a tile will earn the top billing of points, but there’s a small catch. Players who have tied amounts of birds will cancel each other out, denying each other from scoring any points at all.
In addition to placing your birds, if you happen to have control of an animal, you can activate an animal you control once per round. The timing of animal activation can be critical, as a late activation gives players precious little time to react to your moves. But you can only do one free action per turn, meaning if you control multiple animals you’ll need to figure out which one you want to use and when. The animal element adds layers to the territory control aspect, as most of them will allow you to move, remove, or even swap anyone’s birds between tiles, something that is impossible to do without the aid of an animal companion. That being said, the animals themselves aren’t worth very many points, so you need to ensure you use their powers effectively if you want to claim dominance.
That’s the core of Perch, slowly spreading out your flock to capture points and manipulate the table state to deny your opponents points. Beyond points, most of the tiles in the game also offer some benefit or twist. Some will give you control of an animal, which you can use as a free action in the next round to cause just a little bit of chaos by moving some birds, while other tiles will allow you to put extra birds into the migration bag, or will modify the first player position. Things of that nature.
There’s a lot of variability in the tiles themselves, with 24 tiles included in the game and only 8 to 13 being used per game (depending on player count), each game of Perch will feel different. Whether it’s because of the specific mix of animals available, or even just the fact that having specific tiles next to each other may influence some of the decisions you make on a game to game basis (like how the animals move). Further influencing your decisions is a secret end of game objective card that may tip the scales one way or another when you’re placing your birds.
On the subject of player count, I was initially dismayed when I saw the two player mode of the game included a neutral third player, which the rulebook deems a “Bird-brained player”. What this actually amounts to is a third colour going into the bag, which may work its way into both players hands, to be used by both to deny each other the sweet, sweet majorites.
Perch is not a strategic game, not really. So much of Perch is reacting to what the other players have done, because the other players presence in each of the tiles is so wildly important. Each round you’re only guaranteed two of your own birds to place, but just because draw other players birds out of the bag, doesn’t mean you have less control. Absolutely not, as I said before, the real dynamism of Perch’s system is the fact that ties are so punishingly cruel. If two players are just one bird off from each other on a juicy 6 point tile, you could be holding the difference between their victory and defeat. Sometimes, you plopping an extra bird onto your opponents stack gives them a majority on a tile where being 2nd is the most points, or perhaps you bump them up into a tied position, denying two opponents points.
Perhaps it should go without saying, that they could be holding your fate in their hands, also. While I do think it’s generally more advantageous to have more birds out on the field, a clever player will be able to gerrymander their way to victory. While I enjoyed the freedom of having control over other players birds and using their own tokens against them, or having the ability to use my birdhouse on my opponents to lock down one of their sacks, I couldn’t help but feel frustrated when I pulled two of my opponents birds, and my opponent pulled two of their own birds too. 6 of their birds to 2 of mine in one rounds felt like a violent swing. That’s only really present in the 2 player game though, at higher player counts there’s usually the same number of birds going into the bag than are coming out.
The system of tied players cancelling each other out reminds me a lot of Las Vegas by Rüdiger Dorn. But what Perch lacks in comparison to Las Vegas is the levity introduced by the push-your-luck randomness of rolling a fistful of dice. Perch instead revels in its deterministic cruelty. There is no randomness in Perch, everything you can do right in the open. This means there won’t be any surprise backstab moments. You’ll watch as your opponents push their knife into your plans, and you’re powerless to stop it.
The first two rounds in Perch feel inconsequential. You’ll plop out the 4 birds that have been allocated to you, not really being able to control or effect the game state too drastically. But by the time the 3rd round hits, suddenly everything is contested. Strongholds have been established, and dramatic upsets are starting to take place. The animals have been deployed, shaking up the stability of the flock. Every tile at the end of the game balances on a knifes edge, as you have many options to affect everything, but so do your opponents. It’s deterministic, making it hard to really surprise people. Instead, it’s more of a game of forking your opponents. Putting everyone into a disadvantageous position, no matter what they choose. It’s gratifying watching someone give up one battlefield to concentrate their energies somewhere else.
I think my favourite rule in Perch is that the player with the least amount of points each round is the last player in the next round. In curling terms, this is called ‘having the hammer’. The last player to make a move means no one will be able to undercut or thwart their plans. This is a pleasant bit of power that allows the player in last place catch up, even if just a little bit. But if someone had a commanding lead over the highest scoring tile, it can be nearly impossible to catch them, considering you’re only guaranteed 2 of your own birds each round. But when you do manage to orchestrate an upset, oh boy is it ever satisfying.
If you’re already a fan of area majority games like El Grande, there’s a lot to love in Perch. It offers new twists and some exciting variability to the gameplay. I appreciate that it only takes 10 minutes to teach, and plays about an hour. Also, the production is pretty great too. The insert has a removable well for the birds to live in, the birds themselves stack so you can easily see who is winning on each tile, and the non-bird animals are acrylic standees, each one featuring their own lovely artwork.
Perch is a game of sharp elbows hidden by soft feathers. It’s artwork and presentation creates a deceptively calm table presence, but its gameplay reveals constant, low-grade tension as every placement threatens every other player at the table. It thrives not on long-term planning, but on reading the table, seizing small opportunities, and knowing exactly when to ruin someone else’s perfect setup. It won’t scratch the itch for players looking for deep strategic arcs or satisfy players who delight in executing carefully laid plans, but for those who enjoy reactive, tactical games, Perch is a compelling game. By the end, the branches are crowded, the margins are razor-thin, and every point feels contested and well-earned.
That’s probably how the seagulls feel when they steal my french fries, now that I think about it.
The expansion to Perch, Perch: Birds of Play is on Kickstarter now
Once upon a time, I was learning about the difference between lived experiences and observed experiences. The teacher split the class in half. One group sat back and recorded what they saw, while the other group had to run up a staircase, breathing only through a straw. Then the class switched roles.
Unsurprisingly, the observers didn’t quite grasp how difficult the task really was until they experienced it themselves. And that lesson came back to me when I sat down to play Tearable Quest, designed by Shintaro Ono, with art by Sai Beppu, and published by Allplay in 2025.
Because on the surface, Tearable Quest looks like nothing. You get a sheet of paper absolutely littered with icons like swords, spells, slimes, goblins, bows, and so on. Your job is to rip out only the icons you need to score points. Each round introduces a different monster with specific scoring requirements, alongside a boss card that’s always available to be tackled, tied to its own icons. Over three two minute rounds, you’re trying to earn the most points by carefully tearing out exactly what you need to match those recipes.
And I do mean exactly.
You can’t have extra icons present in your piece. You can’t have half an icon. It has to be a clean, precise tear of only what’s required. Which sounds easy until you actually try it. The timer starts, you identify what the recipe is, then look down at the sheet. The paper is cluttered, the icons you want are never conveniently grouped together, so you end up carving these awkward zig-zag paths through the paper, trying to isolate just the right pieces without ruining everything around them. To make matters worse, if you flip the sheet over you’ll find treasures that boost your score and curses that bring it back down, adding another layer of consideration to every rip.
Now, Tearable Quest is not just about precision, it’s about speed. You’ll be halfway through a tear, trying to grab one more icon for maximum points, and suddenly you realize there are only a few seconds left. Do you commit to your rip and risk everything, or do you play it safe and just lock in what you have? That tension, that split-second decision-making, is where my heart started to flutter and a smile crossed my face.
And all of this ripping and tearing is happening on a single sheet of paper that has to last you all three rounds. If you go too hard too early, you’ll massacre your page, and you might not have anything usable left in the later rounds. But if you’re too cautious, you fall behind. It creates this surprisingly compelling push and pull between greed and restraint that I wasn’t expecting at all.
That’s where the lived experience hits. From the outside, Tearable Quest looks like a throwaway gimmick. Ripping paper as a game mechanic sounds more like a novelty than something you’d actually want to play. But once you’re in it and the clock is ticking and your hands fumble as you try to make clean, efficient tears, you start to notice how awkwardly fun the game is. You’ll curse how big your thumbs feel. How unpredictable ripping paper can be. How badly you want just one more icon before that timer runs out. You’ll feel jubilant that you managed to complete your rip before the timer runs out, but you’ll flip the paper over and find 2 curses, rendering your score nil. Oh, the hubris…
The art plays a big role in selling the experience. Sai Beppu’s illustrations are bright, cartoonish, and disarming in a way that makes the whole thing feel playful rather than ridiculous. You’re still an adult sitting there gleefully ripping up paper, but the game leans into that energy instead of fighting it, and it works wonderfully.
There isn’t a huge amount of variety here. There are two different sheets to play with, four different monsters (you’ll use 3 during each game), and half a dozen bosses. There are some bonus cards to mix things up, but the core experience doesn’t really change. You’re always doing the same thing, ripping, optimizing, and hoping you’ve left yourself enough icons to work with for the next round. It’s always a bit frantic, certainly a bit messy, and very consistent in the experience that it offers.
That consistency is part of its charm. It’s light, it’s quick, and it never feels like too much. You’re not going to build a whole game night around Tearable Quest, but it’s really easy to fit into the beginning or end of one. Because it’s so light and fast, It’s the kind of game you’re almost never going to refuse, even if you’ve already played it a few times.
Tearable quest is charming and genuinely unique. I can’t think of anything else that turns ripping up a piece of paper into the main event and actually makes it fun. And honestly, it doesn’t really need to be anything more than that.
