A couple years ago, a friend brought the game Crash Octopus (2021, Itten) to the table as a throw-away filler ending to the night. Although one of my groups does push party and dexterity games to the table from time to time, it’s relatively infrequent.
I was game, so we gave Crash Octopus a shot…and I really liked the table presence while flicking toys around the table to both solve my personal win goals and to disrupt the plans of others. I enjoyed myself but didn’t consider adding it to my collection.
However, Crash Octopus remained on the brain for a while.
I had the chance to stroll the aisles of the French game convention Festival International des Jeux earlier this year, and during that stroll I stumbled upon a booth selling a French-language copy of Crash Octopus for about 15 euros. I remembered my earlier play and I had some space in my carry-on, so I plunked down the cash and printed out a copy of the English rules when I got back to the US.
After a few recent plays of Crash Octopus with my family, I have to say—I was wrong to wait on this one. It is perfect for game days with my kids and still appeals to adult gamers looking for a 20-minute dexterity exercise before or after flexing the brain muscles with heavier fare. And, shouldn’t everyone have a silly octopus game in their collection?
“I’m the Captain Now”
Crash Octopus is a 1-4 player dexterity title which asks players to do the one thing we all know you planned your week around: flicking a small, temperature-reading-on-your-steak flag at a bunch of tiny components to make them gently hit a small wooden boat. Yes, there’s something about an octopus, goblets, gems, and a bunch of tentacles, but really, you’re here for the flicking.
You’re also here for the dice chucking, but we’ll come back to that.
The game’s setup is so inviting. Using a small piece of rope to line the game’s perimeter, players first put an octopus head (technically, a half-head, as if it was submerged) in the middle of the table and surround it with eight tentacle pieces of varying shapes. Then, after putting 2-4 boats near the outer edge of the rope’s perimeter, somebody drops a bunch of pieces on the octopus head to make them spread all over the “ocean.” (It is this moment, amongst many great moments, that my kids love best. “I get to create a mess AND that’s the actual game setup?”)
The goal is simple: get five different treasure pieces onto your boat before other players can do the same thing. (The “ocean” is full of one set of the five pieces per player, so in a three-player game, there are 15 small pieces scattered around the board.) You get pieces on your boat by flicking a tiny flag at a piece in the ocean, and as long as that piece touches your boat, you get to load it on and make space for it alongside any existing pieces, all of which must be different.
If you don’t want to “Flick a Treasure”, as it is formally known, you can Navigate instead. That allows players to reposition their boat by flicking a small anchor token to another spot on the map.
That’s Crash Octopus in a nutshell, a better-looking version of something like Flotsam Float, with significantly more flicking. But there’s one other thing that happens every couple turns—an Octopus Attack. These attacks, triggered when a certain number of successful treasure flicks have taken place, are my personal favorite moments of Crash Octopus because it’s really the best way to disrupt the plans of your opponents.
When someone triggers an Octopus Attack, each player in turn order takes a six-sided die and drops it (or, in extreme cases, throws it) at the octopus head. Based on where it lands and the face of the thrown die, something happens—maybe you have to move the octopus head, maybe you have to move a tentacle adjacent to wherever the die stopped moving.
But in the best-case scenario, you toss that die at the octopus head and it caroms directly into the boat of an opponent who is one treasure piece away from winning the game, knocking over their boat and all their pieces back into the ocean. For my money, this might be the greatest gaming moment of my year, even when I am the victim of an Octopus Attack.
Flick That Treasure!
Crash Octopus is a joy, a perfect dexterity experience that doesn’t overstay its welcome, fits on almost any size table, and can be taught in 60 seconds while providing a lifetime of flicking thrills. The game includes a couple of practice mini-game variants as well as “Octopus Bowling”, which are of no interest to me. Come for the main game, stay for the main game! I’ve now played Crash Octopus with casual game groups, my strategy gaming group, and my kids, and everyone leaves the experience howling with laughter.
Crash Octopus is silliness at its finest!
Crash Octopus details
- Designer: Naotaka Shimamoto
- Artists: Yoshiaki Tomioka
- Publishers: Atalia, Bloom Games (I), CMON Global Limited, funbot, itten, SD Games
- Release Date: 2021
- Player count : 1 - 5
- Age range : 7+
- Time range : 20 - 30 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Dice Rolling, Flicking, Push Your Luck
- More articles about Crash Octopus.
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