You are a cat. You go boop and cats around you are booped. Try to remain on the bed and line up three cats in a row!
boop. is an adorable two-player board game designed by Scott Brady that pushes the limits of your inner cat. In this minimal chess-like abstract game, start out with kitten tokens and help them push (or “boop”) their way to becoming adult cats.
Imagine sharing a bed with your siblings. Now imagine that they’re rambunctious kittens all tussling for their own comfortable spot. You jump onto the bed and try to claim your rightful place by pushing them around, but you can only make them move one space at a time. So little by little, you push them till they’ve fallen off the bed.
The goal of boop is to become the first player to have three cats lined up in a row. Players start off with eight cute little kitten meeples in either gray or orange. You then take turns placing the kittens on the bed-themed board (featuring a lovely soft quilted layer on top) and slowly begin booping each other off.
Once three kittens are lined up, they’re permanently removed from play, and in their place three adult cats enter your pool of playable meeples. Booping kittens around doesn't mean your own kittens are safe — players have to carefully plot their new location to protect them from being booped right back by the latest meeple to enter the fray. If you’re not careful about your positioning, kittens can be knocked off the board pretty easily. When you get to three cats each, that’s when the game really gets interesting.
While kittens can only push each other around, larger adult cats are strong enough to boop anybody. Once you have a few of these powerful pieces, you’re trying to knock out as many of your opponent’s kittens and cats as possible. This not only helps to free up space for kittens to turn into cats, but if you have all your kitten pieces on the board, a special rule allows you to grow any single kitten into a cat. Getting two cats lined up in a row is a powerful formation: it’s impossible to push them around anymore, as there’s another cat blocking the way.
You corner your opponent’s last kitten, then you boop it off the board and line up your third cat to win. For a simple two-player game, boop. has a lot of depth and its adorable presentation and theme only makes its case stronger. I'm sure many will gladly return to this game over time to take their place atop the bed. Move over, chess — the kitties have come to claim their throne.
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