At the most recent AcadeCon gaming convention we received a large number of donated games. Many if not most of these were big box Wargames but not all. Among them was Outfoxed! by Gamewright and this past weekend I had a chance to play it with the family.
Outfoxed! is a co-op game where everyone works together to discover which Fox was the one who stole a pie. Each Turn a player rolls a set of 3 dice. Before rolling they must declare if they are wanting to search for Clues or Reveal suspects. Based on this declaration they are looking for 3 of the same icons (Paw prints for Clues and an Eye for revealing suspects). They may re-roll any number of dice twice beyond the initial roll to try and get a matching set.
If they fail to get a matching set then our culprit Fox moves 3 spaces along a defined path toward escape.
If the player chose to Revel suspects and got 3 matching symbols (An eye) they can turn over 2 suspect cards which are spread around the board. (there are 16 suspect cards each game and the game starts with 2 already revealed).
If the player chose to look for clues and got 3 matching symbols (paw prints) the may move that number of spaces (some paw prints are doubles, so between 3 and 6 spaces. You can move vertically or horizontally a or a combination of the two, but not diagonally). If they can land on a space on the board with a Paw Print icon they take the top most clue and using a really ingenious device can determine if the Culprit Fox was wearing the article of clothing from the clue token.
With this new information you can eliminate possible suspects. If we now know that our Culprit was wearing a Top Hat then we can eliminate any revealed suspects not wearing one.
Players take turns around the table completing these actions. Sometimes revealing more suspects or finding more articles of clothing that our Culprit was or was not wearing and if failing the dice roll allowing our Culprit Fox to move closer to escape.
The game was fairly quick to set up. You lay out the board. Shuffle and deal the 16 suspect cards around the outer edge. Stack up the 16 clue tokens near by, lay out the 3 dice and shuffle the Thief cards and without looking insert one of them into the clue device. Then you’re ready to play.
We only played one time through and won with 12 spaces left to go (meaning 4 more missed turns and the Culprit Fox would have escaped). At no time did I think we wouldn’t succeed. The game is co-op which is a big win for me and I really do think the clue card device is genius (though the lighting in our game room isn’t ideal and it was hard to know right away if the clue device revealed they were or were not wearing that item). The game is rated for 5+. My boys are 10 and 11 and both liked it but I think they are borderline too old for it.
Here are their reviews and scores:
JG (11 years old) rated it as a B. He said he liked how you had different options each round. He really liked the clue device. It was fun to use. He thought luck was too much of a factor and never felt like we would lose.
Jacob (10 years old) rated it as a B+. He also really liked the clue device and thought the ‘clock’ of the Culprit Fox moving closer to getting away on a failed roll was fun.
Val who doesn’t always play with us, did this game and rated it a B+. It was fun, but a bit simple. She likes that it is Co-op.
As for me, I would rate it a B- now, but if my kids were younger probably a B+. I like that it’s Co-op. I like the push your luck dice rolling mechanic with choices to make each turn. Thematically it’s fun. The art is a bit too simple for me (but not for a kids game, which it is). At my kid’s ages now this doesn’t have a high re-playability for us, but i’m very happy to have a copy in the AcadeCon Game Library.
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