Death by Coconuts expansions
- Board's Eye View
- Jun 30
- 2 min read
We featured Bubblegum Stuff's Death by Coconuts three years ago on Board's Eye View, where we described it as Stupid Deaths (University Games) meets Wits & Wagers (NorthStar Game Studio). It's a game where players are offered three choices for the number of fatalities, hazarding 1-3 chips on the option they think has the highest number. Choose the right option and you advance along the track one space for each chip you wagered; choose wrong and you move back that same number of spaces. It's a simple trivia and betting game but it's a lot of fun. Like all trivia games, however, replayability is limited by the number of questions. Death by Coconuts comes with 250 death cards, so you'd need to play it a lot before it is spoilt by overfamiliarity but, like death itself, that overfamiliarity will get you in the end.
Help is in hand tho'. Bubblegum Stuff have added three mini-expansions that provide additional cards for incorporation into the game. Each has its own unifying theme but you can readily incorporate the cards from each and all the expansions into the death card deck of the original game.
There are 50 new death cards in both the Dark Deaths and Movie Deaths expansions but just 25 cards in the True Crime expansion. The Movie Deaths tot up the body counts in specific movies and TV series. For us it's the best of the three because it's the theme with the widest appeal. Most of the movies and TV shows that are referenced are well known, so that even if a player hasn't actually seen one of the films they will usually have an enough of an idea of it to be able to make a reasoned ball-park guess at its death toll. From our plays at Board's Eye View tho', the big surprise was just how low the body count was for some movie characters that we'd always thought of as heavy hitters.
The Dark Deaths relate to sex and drug-related demises in the real world, so may be best avoided if you're playing Death by Coconuts as a macabre game with your children (What are you? The Adams Family?). The True Crime cards all relate to high-profile murder cases, so you're mostly comparing the number of victims of various named serial killers.
However you play and whoever you play with, these expansions will give a new lease of life to your copy of Death by Coconuts.
