Board games make for an odd sort of commodity at the annual Toy Fair trade show in New York. They're not like static toys that, as a retail buyer, you can just look at and make an informed decision about (dolls, Legos, model airplanes, stuffed animals, educational books, kites, balloons, etc.). In order to determine the value of most games, it's necessary to spend some time at a vendor's booth to understand a given game. Ideally, you'd want to kick back and actually play a game, and that is more often than not, a tough sell, because in spite of the fact that the fair goes on for four days, retailers, who travel from all four corners of the globe to get there, have a lot of square footage to cover, and really, not much time to do it.
This was never a problem for the three siblings (two sisters and a brother) running the Donkey - It's A Kick booth. From opening day, through to the last half hour of show time, at around 3:30 on Wednesday afternoon, the round table that defined much of their booth space was packed with people playing the game. Cleve Cleveland, President of Cleveland Kids, LLC, was the obvious ringmaster, and at any given point in time, from any point even remotely near their booth in the lower exhibit hall, you could hear him joking with the tableful of people with whom he and his sisters (Jayne and Claudia) were playing the game. Some of the people were talked into wearing donkey ears with flashing lights. They asked me if I'd like to wear a set of these ears, but I declined.
I did, however, join in the fun, because right from the get-go, I wanted to know what all the ruckus and almost continuous booth traffic was all about. It was and is about a very simple card game with a little bit of 'musical chairs' thrown in to develop a scoring mechanism. Basically, what you've got is more or less a standard deck of cards, the suits of which in the game are defined by color (red, yellow, blue or green). Two wild cards make it a 54-card deck. At the start of each round, a designated dealer deals four cards to every player, including him or herself, and places the remainder of the deck in front of him/her, for use as a draw pile.
The object of the game is to be the first player to have four of a kind in your hand. This is accomplished by passing cards, clockwise, one at a time, as the dealer draws them, one at a time, from the draw pile. Dealer (and players) look at the cards in their hand. Dealer draws a card, determines whether he/she wants to keep it or pass it, depending on whether it will help him/her in his/her quest for four of a kind. If the dealer doesn't want the card, he passes it clockwise, and draws another card. If the player to the dealer's left doesn't want the card the dealer just passed him, the player passes it on to the player on their left. The card(s) will continue around the circle of players (thus, the circular table in this booth) until someone decides that it might be worthwhile in their quest for four of a kind to keep one, and passes a different card on. Cards whip around the table and are either kept or passed until someone has actually collected four of a kind (wild cards, obviously, can be used as any card).
The kicker (appropriate to this donkey theme) is that when a player actually has four of a kind, they grab for a blue disc in the center of the table. There is always one less disc than the number of players (like one less chair in musical chairs). When the player with four of a kind grabs one, everyone else has to grab one, too, which will inevitably lead to a single player, who's been just a tad slow, and is left without a blue disc for the round of play. That player has to put an "X" next to the letter "D" on a score sheet. You continue to play rounds until one player has "X"s next to the letters D-O-N-K-E-Y on their score sheet, at which point, said player has to announce to one and all that he is a donkey. This player will continue to participate in game play, but will attempt to have a conversation with any and all of the remaining players. Any 'active' player who speaks to this 'donkey,' automatically becomes a donkey, too, regardless of how many "X"s they've filled in on their score sheet. This part of the game is a little like a "Simon Says" exercise in which the 'donkey' player(s) try to trick opponents into some sort of response.
The game continues until only two 'active' players are left, at which point, these two will participate in a "Showdown" round. There is only one puck in the center of the table, each player has half a deck and tries to get four of a kind from their half, discarding what they choose not to keep in their hand. If this fails, the two players will start to draw from their opponents' discard pile, until someone, eventually gets four of a kind and grabs the single puck.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner!!!
Between the mad scramble at the end of each round of play to grab a disc (known as a 'puck' in the jargon of the game) and the level of attempted conversation by game 'donkeys,' it's not hard to figure out what the almost continuous ruckus at this booth was all about.
But wait. . .we're not through. Added to all of this is a set of 54 'kicker' cards, which give each round of play a flavor of its own. Each 'kicker' card (one is drawn by the dealer before a round begins) is titled and contains a set of special rules which will govern a single round of play.
For example - "A House Full - For this round, the dealer will deal five cards to each player. Instead of 4 of a kind, the object is to get a Full House (3 of one card, and 2 of another card) before taking the first puck."
These kickers can get real tricky, like one that requires you, as you pass a card, to say a word that begins with a dealer-chosen letter of the alphabet. This kicker is titled "A" is for Alfalfa. Dealer can't choose Q, X or Z. If you can't think of a word that begins with the chosen letter, "you get something that begins with "L". . a letter." In other words, you have to mark your score sheet with an "X" next to one of your D-O-N-K-E-Y letters.
It is fast-paced, ridiculously chaotic and creates an almost instant social bond among the players. People who didn't know each other before they sat down to play this game were exchanging business cards, phone numbers, family histories and making arrangements to pick out the furniture, before the last "X" was doled out to the final 'active' player.
Crazy fun, designed in its raw form by the mother of the two sisters and brother (and four other children), who eventually created the company and (for now) its signature game.
"When the days got short and the weather turned cold (in Washington state), we needed a good indoor game to keep seven kids, aged 4 to 15, busy," they explain on their Web site - www.donkeythegame.com. "Fortunately, for us, our mother had an incredible imagination and could make a board game out of a Brussels Sprout and two clothespins."
"She was the one who taught us the basics of "DONKEY," they go on to say. "She changed the rules randomly to keep it interesting and keep us out of her hair while she studied for a nursing exam. Before long, we were making up our own rules, some of which involved sling shots and BB guns.
"Clearly," they conclude, "we still needed her guiding wisdom if we were to survive adolescence."
Survive they did, to bring Donkey - It's A Kick to market and now, we can all benefit from their mother's wisdom in creating not just a game, but a game atmosphere that is totally engaging. It can not only serve its design purpose of keeping a group, for whatever reason, out of somebody else's hair, but can and does engage a group in an activity that brings them together. Sounds like the very definition of a family game.
Donkey - It's a Kick is self-published by Cleveland Kids, LLC. It's recommended for ages 8 to adult, for three to eight players. Played over its multiple rounds, it can chew up a lot of time, but it's the sort of game you can pretty much stop playing whenever the mood strikes you. The Web site lists the game at $24.99, but there's already a new copy available on BoardGameGeek for $20.
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