Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
When I picked up a pile of the new “Tiny Box” game series from Allplay at Gen Con 2024, I just assumed that at least one of these games would be weak. Underdeveloped, maybe. Not much meat on the bone. Certainly not replayable.
But with my plays of Panda Panda, I’m three for three on games that are at least decent, and in the case of both Rainbow and Panda Panda, games that not only landed with players in my groups, but were also enjoyed by my family, meaning they will reside in the game closet for at least a little while.
That’s because Panda Panda has just enough depth to make it worth the ten minutes it takes to teach, then play with a group of up to four players. Using a small deck of just 32 cards, players aim to make a winning set of cards by mixing their starting hand with cards drawn from the top of the deck as well as the discard piles of each opponent. But here’s the rub: unlike a game such as Gin, where a player has to end play with a hand of 10 cards that all fits into sets or runs, Panda Panda asks players to declare victory with a wide range of winning hand combinations, meaning the game could end at almost any time.
The 32 cards are broken up into letters, ranging from A to G. With a starting hand of five cards, each player uses their turn to either draw a card (top deck or discard pile) or discard to a personal discard pile. The number of cards in each letter ranges downward from A, so while there are 10 A cards in the deck, there’s only one G card. (All this, along with the winning hand combinations, are neatly summarized on a player aid.)
If a player discards an A card, that forces all players to pass one card from hand to the player on their left. Otherwise, there are no other funny rules when a player discards. If anyone begins their turn with a winning combination, they immediately win the game.
I love that there are ways to win with just two cards. You might begin a game with an A, two Cs, a D, and an E…and, as long as you can shed cards down to a C-E combo, you’ll win. But it’s almost never that simple. If you begin a game with a G, you have a couple of very specific options that no one else has—and it might be faster, if all your other cards are unique, to just try and collect the cards you don’t have by drawing other cards.
But what happens when someone else discards an A card? Yep, you’ve just messed with your own winning combination.
“That Wasn’t Bad!”
My wife, critical to the core (which makes married life just as interesting), was surprisingly happy with Panda Panda after our first play. “That wasn’t bad!” she started. “I didn’t think there would be much there because the box is so small, but…”
And that’s been the beef with other players, both with Panda Panda as well as other “Tiny Box” games from Allplay. Insert whatever cliche you want here, but the reality is that the small box and card size makes people think that there won’t be much game in the box. Then the game starts, and people are casually surprised by the amount of depth available for one of these 10-minute games. (My games ranged from four turns in five minutes, to about 15 minutes on the high end.)
Now, that said, 3-4 plays in, I don’t know how often I’m reaching for this over other classics here in the house. (UNO has surprisingly good staying power.) But the game plays just as well at two players as it does at four players, and it is a first to two victories win condition. With four players, you could face a worst-case scenario where each player wins one round, then everyone is in the running for the fifth-and-final round to win their second hand and take the victory overall.
Panda Panda was good. The artwork isn’t bad. You can teach it in 60 seconds. It knows its place in the tabletop canon, and as a light filler we enjoyed it.
Panda Panda details
- Designer: 宮野 華也 (Kaya Miyano)
- Artists: 別府さい (Sai Beppu)
- Publishers: Allplay, Mob+ (Mob Plus)
- Release Date: 2023
- Player count : 2 - 4
- Age range : 6+
- Time range : 15 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Hand Management
- BGG Geek Rating: 6.76732 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 3.5.
- More articles about Panda Panda.
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