Players: 3-8
Time: 15-20 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)
The Components
As with the other daVinci card games, this one comes with a set of high quality cards (106 here) and rules in a large cardbox.
Cards: The cards are all full-sized cards printed full-color on linen-textured stock.
72 of the cards in this set are dream cards. They show one of three people (a girl, a parrot, a whale) in front of one of three colored backgrounds (red, blue, yellow), with one of two names (Molly, Polly); 18 additional cards are instead "crazy" dreams, which don't have a name, but do show a picture and a background. They're all simply done, though attractive.
15 of the remaining cards are action cards; there are three different actions (confuse card; remind card; reverse card). They have icons, but for the first couple of uses I had to look them up because they're not entirely obvious.
The last card is an alarm clock which marks the end of the game.
There is theoretically a theme to these cards, about kids dreaming about imaginary whales and such, but it really doesn't hold make a lot of sense. Maybe it would to kids.
Rules: A large rule sheet printed in four languages (English, Italian, German, French). Easy enough to understand.
Box & Tray: As with the other games in this line, this one comes with a hard plastic tray which holds the cards in two piles and slides into the box. This is superb packaging for a card game.
On the whole the components are high quality, and relatively attractive. The theming of the game isn't that great, but it still earns an above average "4" out of "5" for Style.
The Gameplay
The object of Moby Pick is to capture the most and best cards by quickly matching face-up cards with face-down cards that you've memorized.
Setup: Each player takes two non-action cards, memorizes them, and places them face-down in front of him. The "alarm clock" card is then placed 15 cards from the bottom of the deck to mark game end. A first player starts the game.
Taking Your Turn: On a player's turn he flips up the top card and then takes an appropriate action based on if it's a dream card, a crazy dream card, or an action card.
Dream Card. If it's a dream card, the active player has to chant, "Molly, Polly, Moby Pick." Any other play may touch the card while he's doing so; they then must flip up one of their face-down cards; if the two exactly match (name, color, picture) then he gets to keep them both for his dream pile. Else, they're both discarded.
Crazy Dream Cards. These cards just have a color and and a picture, no name, but otherwise they work like Dream Card. You can match a Crazy Dream card to another Crazy Dream card or to a Dream card that has the same name and color.
Action Cards. There are also three special action cards. There's: aConfuse card which lets the active player shuffle around other people's face-down cards; a Remind card which lets everyone look at their face-down cards; and a Reverse card which causes the active player to pull additional cards until he gets a Dream card, and then everyone must match the opposite of that.
Getting New Cards: There are two ways to get new cards. If no one takes the card you flipped up before your rhyme is done, you keep it. In addition if you have no cards in front of you at the start of your turn, you get to take one and put it face-down in front of you before you do your normal card play.
Ending the Game: The game ends when the alarm card card is turned up; then everyone counts their cards, earning 2 points for each Crazy Dream in their pile and 1 point for each Dream. Whomever has the most points wins.
Relationships to Other Games
Moby Pick is a simple memory & dexterity game.
Memory games are of course reminescent of older games like Concentration (1958) and more recent entrants like Dawn Under (2004). This game has less to memorize, since it's just 1-4 cards typically, but with each card having 3 elements, some of which are very similar (e.g., Molly, Polly), it can be challenging. A couple of our players made multiple wrong card grabs in the game.
This game is pretty mellow for a speed card game. I'd been expecting something like Slapjack, but here there was rarely more than one person trying to get a card; this probably would have changed if we'd had more players.
Moby Pick was the second release in the Allegro series of card games put out by daVinci and Mayfair. The others are Abracadabra, Mister Bill, and FarFalia. They're all clearly intended for the family crowd but only one of the others is a kid's game like this one (Mister Bill), while one is intended for families with kid's (Abracadabra), and the last is a robust trick-taking game (FarFalia).
The Game Design
Moby Pick is a pretty simple game, and so it's a bit hard to say too much intelligent about the game design.
Overall, as a kid's memory & dexterity I feel like it succeeds very well. There was intense concentration, even among our group of adults, and laughter and mocking when a player picked the wrong card.
It is largely, perhaps entirely, random, so don't expect anything deep here, but for its category of games I give it a "4" out of "5" for Substance. It's well done.
Conclusion
Moby Pick is a well-designed game of concentration and quick reactions for kids. For that demographic I'd suggest it, because I think a lot of kids will enjoy it. Adults won't mind playing it with them either.
