Matthew Bailey
On the 10th day of Christmas, my children played with me… Ten Farting Canines, Nine Naming Words, Eight Hamster Homes, Seven Toiling Train Lines, Six locking safe keys… FIVE CARLSBERG CHIPS!, Four Sad Snowmen, Three Magnetic Mazes, Two “Unmatched: Witcher” sets, and a reaction game I played with all three!
“Queen of Farts” is essentially the card game “Cheat,” filled with a little bit of silliness. Obviously, being a father of three boys who are basically obsessed with anything containing poo, farts, or willies, “Queen of Farts” was right up their street.
The concept of the game is simple. All the cards are double-sided, with the back showing a selection of animals and the front showing whether they are farting or not. Each player starts with three cards and a draw pile.
Players take turns laying their cards face down, following suit by playing a card with at least one matching animal on it. If you cannot play a matching card, you must pick up a card. What you are essentially trying to do is get rid of your fart cards. If you think another player has just laid a fart card face down, you can call them out by shouting—and this is the bit the kids enjoyed—“I think someone’s farted!”
If, when the cards are revealed, no one has played a fart card, the player who called out must collect all the cards and place them face up in a fart pile next to them. If a single fart card is revealed, the outcome depends on which type it is, as there are three different kinds:
- Normal Fart: The player who played the fart card takes all the cards. If multiple players played the same type, the cards are shared between them.
- Silent but Deadly: All players must quickly hold their noses, and the last one to do so has to take all the cards.
- Queen of Farts: This is actually beneficial. The player who played the Queen takes all the cards but holds onto them. If no one else calls a fart before their next turn, they get to choose which player receives all the cards.
Another bonus is that if you correctly call a fart, you get to take three cards out of your fart pile and put them back in the box. This mechanic is key to securing victory and serves as a great catch-up mechanism that many card games of this type lack.
An interesting twist is that different animals are more likely to be “farty.” Dogs, skunks, cows, and seals rank from most to least farty in that order. This adds a layer of strategy, as you can gauge the likelihood of a card just played having a fart on it. Once all the cards are drawn from the pile, you count up who has the fewest cards in their fart pile, and that person is declared the winner.
Now, obviously, this is a really silly little card game, but the boys really enjoyed it. Surprisingly, there’s quite a lot to trying to gauge whether someone is farting or not. Equally, being able to assess the likelihood of certain animals being farty adds a bit more depth to the game. While this isn’t the best card game I’ve ever played, it’s quite good fun. I was pleasantly surprised, given its silliness, and this is definitely a game that will join our travel rotation for family trips.
The card quality is pretty good, and they shuffle nicely. However, the box is a bit rubbish. The cards just sit inside without being snugly secured, and there’s a weird pokey-out bit at the bottom that makes stacking the box a bit of a pain. But whatever—it’s not a dealbreaker, especially since you can pick this up for a reasonable price.
Not absolutely essential, but for a silly, fun family card game, you could do a lot worse.
