Feed & Breed Review

Continuing my pledge to cover as many UK indie games as I can, I’ve been playing Feed & Breed from newcomer Martyn Hedges and his Scattershot Games label. It’s a super cute push-your-luck game about rabbits trying to collect food and avoid foxes, and it’s a lot of fun.

Fox in a box

The game is the same size as a standard deck of cards, which is an instant win for me because portability is key to lighter and filler games doing well. Among the 54 cards there are food cards with carrots and values on, foxes (boo! hiss!), and some natty tracker cards, which means you don’t need tokens to track how many bunnies or how much food you have. Nice.

It’s one of those games which I can explain to you in a couple of minutes, so while I don’t do rulebook regurgitations here, I want to emphasise just how easy Feed & Breed is to learn. On your turn you draw a card from the Forage deck, which is seeded with fox and food cards. If you draw a food card, you instantly gain that much food. If you draw a fox, you lose a rabbit, plus one additional rabbit per 10 rabbits in your warren. From there you get the juicy bit which appeals to the gambler in me, the push-your-luck phase.

You can choose to keep drawing cards, but you don’t instantly get the food this time. You can keep turning cards for as long as you feel lucky. If you choose to stop, you add all the collected food to your tracker. If you draw a fox though, you lose bunnies again and all the food you’d drawn up to that point. Once you reach the end of the deck you do the feed and breed phase. Spend one food for every rabbit in your warren, then with any food left over spend it 1:1 to add rabbits. So for example if you had five food left over after you fed your bunnies, you add another five of the long-eared scamps to your warren.

That’s as difficult as the game gets, which makes it perfect as a lightweight family game, or a quick filler to start or end the evening.

Mental maths

The gamer in you who wants something more from a game than flipping a card and hoping for the best will be pleased to know there’s enough in Feed & Breed to keep your brain working. At the start of the game, you know how many fox cards are in the deck, and you’re never allowed to look through the discard pile to see how many of those foxes have come out already. For instance, if you’re in the first round of a two-player game, you know there are only three foxes. If you keep track of the fact that three have already come out, then you know you can go carrot-mad safely for the rest of the round.

As each player moves past each set of ten rabbits, however, you add another food and another fox card to the deck, and slowly the game gets a bit more awkward. It’s never difficult, but it’s a great test of memory and concentration for younger players. I really like the fact that it gradually gets trickier as the game goes on without ever getting hard. It also doesn’t drag on too long, which is another strength in a light game’s arsenal.

A game which fits in your pocket, tickles your brain, plays well with any age of player, and is done & dusted in 15 minutes? It’s a winner.

Final thoughts

There’s no denying that the market for small, light card games is heavily saturated. To make a dent in it you need to do something a bit different, and that’s what Feed & Breed does well. It doesn’t lean into the toilet humour themes which so many games do. You wouldn’t believe how many offers I see to look at some new ‘risqué’ games that I have no interest in. Instead, we’ve got colourful, beautifully illustrated cards which appeal to any age and player.

Feed & Breed is available from the print-on-demand store, The Game Crafter, and you can order a copy right here. I’ve spoken to Martyn, the designer, who tells me that there may be crowd sale later in the year which will drop the current $19.99 price, so keep your eyes open for that.

Feed & Breed is a cracking little game which you can happily play with the family and be done with in the time between ordering and getting your food when you’re out at the pub for tea. Push-your-luck distilled into a deck of cards with a cutesy theme you’ll love.

Review copy kindly provided by Scattershot games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

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