One of my co-workers is also a summer camp councilor. Last week he was trying to explain to me about a game called Kittens in a Blender and how he was going to try and get a live action version going with the kids. Now that I have actually played the game, I know how amazing that idea is!
(EDIT: By "live action" I didn't mean that he's going to murder actual kittens or children! He's going to set up a area with a fan that turns off and on as the "blender" and a safe area across from it. Then I imagine the kids will wear different colored shirts or flags to represent different teams and run around.)
Kittens in a Blender is a very simple concept that works fantastically and is a lot of fun. You have a Blender, a Box, and a Counter space between the two. These are the three spaces that your kittens can be put or moved. There are big cards that say "The Box" and "The Blender" which you ingeniously put into each side of the actual game box. Each player picks a color--there are only four colors so only four people can play at a time--and then grabs six cards. Once the deck of cards runs out, that's it, no more drawing. The game itself is over when all the "blend" cards have been played.
Your goal is to get all your color of kittens in to The Box, or at least more than any other player. Players go around playing two cards at a time out of their hand. So during one turn you might play one of your color kittens into The Box and then play someone else's into The Blender. Then the next person might use a move card to get their kitten out of The Blender and a dog card that causes everyone to switch their hands.
Of course, there is always the Blend card, which means kitten murder for all the poor kittens trapped in the Blender if anyone plays the card; though you can stop it by playing a "Pulse" card. Blending also means that any kittens in The Box are permanently saved, and those players have scored points. Once all sixteen of the Blend and Blend/Pulse cards are played the game is over and the player with the most kittens that were saved under The Box wins.
There are more cards that do different things like moving all kittens onto the counter or conversely moving all the kittens into The Blender. I thought the game had a pretty good mix of each type of card. It also made the game that much more entertaining that the discard pile doesn't get reused as the deck. That means once you get to the end of the game it turns a little crazy with people running out of cards or switching hands every turn or Blending every turn since people had tried to save those cards in case they needed them later.
Vengeance plays a big part in this game too, but since there are only four players and four colors, you pretty much end up trying to get vengeance against everyone else and it works out.
What you end up with is a super fun, fast-paced game that is great for any kind of party along side games like Zombie Dice or We Didn't Playtest This. I would highly recommend it!
Also, neat thing I just discovered - I was just searching the Googles to find a link to the game from it's official website and as it turns out the original company that created Kittens in a Blender went under! So a different company called Redshift Games bought it up and started a Kickstarter to get the game printed and distributed again. Looks like they made there goals, which is awesome! Here is their explanation of the game on their page, which is one thousand times more professional and better than mine!
It looks like there is a seller with old copies of Kittens in a Blender available on Amazon, but I don't think Redshift Games has started printing their own yet. I will probably wait until I can buy the game plus its expansion. Though I might buy an original version just in case! Hopefully Redshift won't change anything aside from the addition of the expansion. The game is perfectly balanced and fun as-is.
Sounds interesting. I'll have to add it to my ever-growing list of games to try.
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