Date Drop
- Board's Eye View
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Date Drop is an easy-to-play family-friendly push-your-luck set collection card game published by Cardboard Quokka Studio. It takes 2-6 players and it's designed by Ahmad Salahuddin.
Most of the cards represent one of four varieties of date - Ajwa, Medjool, Deglet or Halawi - but there are also some cards representing prunes and 'date drop' cards. At the start of the game, each player is dealt a green 'date box' card which specifies the varieties of date they need to collect. The green box cards all require four date cards but each has a slightly different mix. To win, you need to be the first player who completes two green boxes and then one purple box; the purple boxes require a specific mix of five dates.
Gameplay is super easy. You just flip cards until you decide to stop. You take into your hand all the cards you've flipped but if you flip a duplicate you are bust: all the cards you flipped on your turn are discarded and you gain none of them. If you reveal a 'date drop' card then every player gets to make a grab for one of the date cards that have been revealed.
In addition to the push-your-luck card flipping, around half the cards have text on them setting out an ability. At the start of your turn, before flipping any cards, you can trigger an ability effect by discarding the card. Abilities variously let you 'peek' and rearrange the top three cards of the draw deck, 'grab' a random card from another player's hand or 'shout' - naming a date variety and requiring all other players to give you one if they have it in their hand, as in the game Go Fish or Professor Puzzle's Go Farm! Â Players have a hand limit of six, excluding the box card they are trying to complete, so if you end up with more than six cards but without the combination needed to complete your box then you'll have to discard down to six. At higher player counts that means that the 'shout' ability is more often than not going to be used as a 'take that' action to denude opponents of specific cards rather than necessarily giving you cards you actually need.
The box suggests the game is suitable for players age 10+ but Date Drop is actually readily playable by much younger children, just so long as they can read the ability text on the cards. That makes it very suitable as a family game. Our only gripe was our dislike of the notion of 'grabbing' in a card game as that always risks cards getting damaged in players' excitement. The 'grab' ability is really just taking a random card from another player's hand so that doesn't involve any actual grabbing, so the only place you might want to consider modifying the invitation to physically grab cards is when 'date drop' cards are revealed. If you share our concerns over physically grabbing cards you could simply house rule that players go round the table picking their choice of card, starting with the player to the left of the player who flipped the 'date drop'.
However you play, Date Drop can make a tasty 15-minute filler. Cardboard Quokka Studio are bringing the game to Kickstarter. Click here for more details.