Unplugged: Animal Upon Animal

Animal Upon Animal
I think Taiwanese still think Jenga the most classical stacking game, which means there are still a lot of stacking games without wooden bars. And this week, the game is called Animal Upon Animal. When i first met it, it's titled in German, Tier auf Tier, which means the same. Maybe it's because it's in English, so I feel it's not so...elegant. It maybe be worse if we translate it to Chinese directly by it's meaning. In some place, it's called the animal pyramid or tower.

Well, the point is, the game consists with 29 wooden animals and 1 die. The die is different with usual dice that marks dots. The six surfaces show 1, 1, 2, a hand, a question mark,and a crocodile. I'll explain the meaning later. The crocodile is the base of the pyramid. First, put the crocodile in the middle of the table, put the crocodile in the middle of the table, divide the rest animals equally to the players, and then the game begins.

When it's your turn, roll the die. Numbers means the animals you have to place ON the crocodile parallely. Hand means you can choose an animal and then choose a guy to place it on the crocodile for you. Question mark means others will choose an animal for you, and you will put it on the crocodile yourself. Crocodile means you can put your animal BESIDE the crocodile, still, parallely.

Whenever the pyramid falls, the current player has to pick two animals from the ruin. When someone has no animals, he is the winner and te game ends. Or sometimes it ends when someone doesn't wants to continue. It's a happy party game and it's very suitable for beginners.