Lolly Dogs

I am fully aware that sometimes I can turn my nose up at anything that isn’t a game with a certain layer of complexity, and it’s rare that I would ever enjoy a game that is clearly aimed at a very mass-market audience. But I’m going to throw my hands up in the air and say, do you know what? I really enjoyed playing Lolly Dogs by Blue Orange Games.

Lolly Dogs is really simple. You have a board with six spaces on it, and in order to win the game, you have to get six spots covered by dogs. All of the dogs have tongues, and those tongues are different colours. To see the colour of a dog’s tongue, you squeeze the dog and out pops its tongue. It’s super adorable, it’s super cute, and it works most of the time. Occasionally the tongues get stuck out, which is a little bit annoying, but it’s easy enough to overlook because the whole thing is just so much fun. Essentially, it’s a hidden-tile matching game, but instead of tiles you’ve got dogs with tongues.

The way the game works is that you roll two dice, which give you two colours. You then have to pick two dogs, which can be in the middle, on an opponent’s board, or even on your own board, and I’ll explain why you might want to do that in a second. When you press the dogs down, you reveal their tongues. If one of them exactly matches one of the colours rolled, you get to keep that dog. If both dogs match, you get to keep both of them and take another turn. That’s why you might choose a dog on your own board if you already know what colour it is. This continues back and forth as players try to remember the colours of dogs that still belong to their opponents, and eventually the first person to get six dogs in their garden wins.

And that’s about it.

Now, this is not a high-brow game for families who like long-term strategic complexity, but what I will say is that this is the perfect game to play in a board game café, the sort of game you might give as a birthday present to a non-gaming child, or alternatively something quick and easy they can play when friends come over. Plus, the dogs are unbelievably cute.

One criticism I will mention is that on the dice, the reds, oranges, and pinks all look very similar. It was absolutely fine playing it at the Expo under bright white lighting, but I suspect playing it at home under normal living-room lighting might be a bit trickier.

You’ll know in advance whether this is going to be a hit in your house, but if it sounds like your sort of thing, I suspect it’s going to be a very popular one.