Players:2-5
Playing Time: 20-30 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)

The Components

Fish Eat Fish comes with:

• 1 gameboard
• 35 fish
• 1 starfish
• 55 cards

Gameboard: A four-panel high-gloss gameboard. The center of it is a 5x5 grid, bu it's surrounded by colorful pictures of fish, sharks, and octopi which are all simple but cute.

Fish: Sturdy plastic fish which can be stacked as they eat each other. They've got eyes and teeth painted on, and overall look very cute. They appear in the five player colors (red, blue, yellow, green, purple), but there's extras of purple so that they can be used as neutral fish if you're playing with less than five.

Starfish: A solid resin starfish token that's beautifully sculpted. it marks the current player and fight locations, but isn't really necessary.

Cards: Five decks of 11 cards, one for each player. Each card has a shark, two octopi, and other cards valued from 0-5. They're used for fish comat. The art is the same art which is used on the board.

Rulebook: A four-page rulebook, glossy and in full-color. I thought the book muddled the rules a bit, first by making you page back and forth as you learn the game, and second by repeating the same rules again and again and again. The same rules were also repeated again and again.

Out of the Box has a very definite style of simplicity and gloss which can be seen in most of their games. I think it sometimes leaves their games a little plain, but here there's so many cool elements, particularly the stackable fish and the starfish, that there's plenty to feast your eyes upon. Because of the coolness of the bits I've let Fish Eat Fish eke in a "5" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

The object of Fish Eat Fish is to catch the most fish and simultaneously avoid losing your big fish to other players.

Setup: The gameboard is laid in the middle of the table and each player takes his five fish and his deck of 11 challenge cards.

The players now alternate placing their fish on the board with the stipulation that a player can't place one of his own fish next to others of his own fish unless he must. When all players have placed their fish on the board, the remaining spaces (if any) are filled with neutral purple fish.

Moving Fish: On his turn a player moves one of his fish in a straight line, over one or more open spaces and then attacks a fish adjacent to the space he lands on. Or he just attacks a fish adjacent to his starting space if he prefers.

If attacking one of his own fish or a neutral fish, the attacking fish eats it.

If attacking another player's fish, there is a challenge.

<i>Fighting a Challenge. To fight a challenger each player plays one of his challenge cards. They're secretly placed face-down on the table, then revealed simultaneously. Each player adds the number on his card (from 0-5) to the size of his fish (which is the number of fish in the stack, from 1-5). The higher number wins, eating the other fish. In case of a tie, both fish are discarded.

A special shark card always wins (but if both players play a shark they're both discarded).

Each player also has two special octopi cards each of which may be used to automatically escape from a fight.

After a card is played, it's set aside and out of play for the rest of the game.

Eating a Fish. When a player eats a fish, the player places his fish on top of the fish he ate. This forms a stack of fish (and represents a larger fish).

Now the victorious player controls the combined stack of fish.

If the stack is larger than 5, any extra fish are placed in the eating player's "catch" in front of him.

Running Out of Cards: If a player runs out of challenge cards his remaining stacks of fish are removed from the board and placed in his catch. He's now out of the game.

Ending the Game: The game ends when only one player has fish still on the board. His remaining fish are removed from the board and added to his catch.

The player with the most total fish pieces in his catch is the winner.

Relationships to Other Games

Fish Eat Fish is essentially a blind bidding game. Each player has a set of bids that they can make once in the game, valued 0-5, plus a few special cards. Whenever you're making a bid, you're trying to out second- or third-guess your opponent, to win victory for your side.

Fish Eat Fish has similarities to any number of similar simultaneous action games from Basari to the blind auctions of Knizia's own Beowulf and Modern Art.

Fish Eats Fish reminds me the most of Caribbean, another game wheh player has the exact same set of resources, and must decide which to play when. Overall, I think Caribbean is a more clever game, but because of its simplicity, Fish Eat Fish offers a quicker visceral joy.

The Game Design

Fish Eat Fish is a pretty low strategy game. It's an amusing bluffing game that can be heavily influenced by luck, and there's not a lot more to it than that. Because of the low depth of play, it can get repetitive pretty quickly.

However, as a light bluffing game Fish Eat Fish works quite well. There's a limited number of choices each turn that have a big effect on the outcome, and there's a supreme moment of excitement (or disappointment) every turn, when you see what cards were selected. By this measure, Fish Eat Fish works very well ... and that's exactly what it was designed to do.

On the whole Fish Eat Fish earns a "4" out of "5" for Substance. It's a light game, but very amusing and an excellent example of its type of gameplay.

Conclusion

Don't expect any depth here, as this Knizia game of bluffing and blind selection is very light and quite lucky. However, it's also a lot of fun if you like this sort of game, generating shouts and curses in equal amounts.