Monkey Mayhem

There are no turns in this chaotic free-for-all from Scrungo Games. Designed by Jeff Grisenthwaite, it's a card game that uses a deck of 107 'banana' cards numbered 0-5 and you win by having the most cards.

The 2-8 players are each dealt their own deck of 15 cards (13 if there are eight players). You have a hand of four cards and you just draw a card and discard a card to your own discard pile until you think your four cards have a lower total than any of the other players. When you reckon you've the lowest hand, you grab the rubbery toy banana and everyone compares hands. If you're right,. you win the 'Jackpot'. The Jackpot is initially three cards but if a player nabs the banana and does not have a lower total than any other player (and there are no prizes for ties) then they have to add five cards to the Jackpot from their draw deck.

But of course there's more... If you think you have the highest hand, you can grab the rubbery toy monkey wrench instead of the banana. Again, everyone compares hands. If you do indeed have the highest total, the player with the lowest value hand has to give you three cards and donate two cards to the Jackpot. If you grab the monkey wrench and you don't have the highest hand, you must give five cards to the Jackpot.

The banana and monkey wrench toys might just be a silly gimmick but they add undeniably to the appeal of this aptly named game. There's player elimination - lose all your cards and you're out - but no-one is sitting out for very long because their eviction becomes the end-trigger for the game. Other players continue until the remaining Jackpot is claimed and the winner then is the player with the most cards. That means, games are likely to take no more than 10-15 minutes, regardless of the number of players.

Strictly speaking the game isn't entirely 'fair' because you're each playing with individual decks that are dealt our randomly, so players will each have a different mix of card values. If you happen to have a deck that's predominately made up of low-value cards then you've an obviously much higher prospect of winning Jackpots, tho' that's not a guaranteed win because you might still be at risk of losing as a result of monkey wrench claims.

In practice, we weren't overly worried about each other's card mixes because it's a short game and it's the sort of game you play for fun; so no need to mither over casino-style odds. A greater concern was players making immediate 'push-your-luck' grabs for the banana or monkey wrench before anyone has had any chance to draw and discard from their starting hands. Find you have an initial hand of 0-2 cards and there's a high probability that it's already lower than anyone else's. Likewise, a hand of cards all at value 4 or 5 is likely to be a good bet for nabbing that monkey wrench...

Thanks go to @explosmofficial and @giftpruk for supplying us with a copy of Monkey Mayhem for our team to play and review. The game is available from Amazon at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0FHHPP3DK  It's one that all the family can play over Christmas.

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