Hot Potato - Review

This light game for 3 to 9 players is all about passing along the potatoes before they explode. Play cards to keep the potatoes moving, and hope they don't explode on you or you'll get burned.

Players: 3 to 9
Time: 15 to 20 minutes
Designer: Rob Seater
Publisher: Cambridge Games Factory

Components: 12 large Hot Potato cards (two-sided), a huge deck of smaller action cards (blue seasonings and brown movement cards), 24 duplicate seasoning cards, a golden potato chip card and stand, a score track, and a player pawn and identity chip in each of 9 colors. Cards have colorful, simplistic illustrations.

The game is played in three rounds. Each player is dealt a hand of five cards to start the round, and one player starts with the hot potato.

To begin the turn, players play up to one movement card on each potato in front of them, as well as up to one seasoning card. Seasonings are then revealed, modifying the potatoes they were played on to make them (generally) more dangerous. Then duplicating movement cards are revealed, which copy the potato they were played on (as well as copying any seasonings), and send both copies to another player. Finally, other movement cards are revealed, and players follow the appropriate instructions to pass the targeted potatoes left or right, etc.

Any potato that started a turn in front of you and was not passed away explodes on you, causing one point of burn damage. You draw a card whenever you reveal a blue seasoning that you played, or whenever a potato explodes on you. The round ends once all potatoes have exploded, and then a new round starts with two potatoes. After the third round (which starts with three potatoes), whoever has the fewest burns wins.

NOTE: This is only a brief summary, with many details omitted.

Good Stuff

This is a very kid-friendly game. The artwork is light and silly, the rules are easy to learn, the gameplay itself is very simple, and a game likely won't take longer than 15 to 20 minutes, which is perfect for short attention spans.

Nobody is likely to get far behind or far ahead. Since seasonings let you draw another card, each player will generally be playing five movement cards per round, regardless of what cards they draw initially. This means everyone can usually move a potato away from themselves five times around, making things reasonably fair. In addition, anyone receiving exploding potatoes will get to draw extra cards, to help them from falling further behind.

There aren't many card games that work well with up to 9 players, so if you have a large gathering of people who want to play a game together, it might be useful to have a game like Hot Potato.

Bad Stuff

There's not much to do in this game aside from play a movement card on every potato in front of you every turn. The "toss" movement cards lets players either attack the leader or get potatoes as far away as possible, but otherwise the cards you draw dictate exactly where the potatoes will go, leaving very little room for volition or strategy.

Since everyone pretty much has 5 action cards, whoever gets passed more potatoes and is forced to use up all their cards first will get exploding potatoes that burn. That's pretty much the game, in a nutshell.

The lack of real choices in this game may keep it from being an adult favorite, but it's easy to imagine it becoming a children's favorite with its colorful artwork and easy gameplay. And if you're looking for a card game for a kid's party that can play with 9 people, this is probably a fine option.