That’s the very question you’ll be asking yourself when you play Push a Monster.
You get 1 Monster Arena, 27 wooden monsters, 81 monster tokens, a sheet full of stickers to put on your wooden monster, two monster pushers and a die. There’s also a very clearly and colorfully illustrated set of well-written, easy-to-read rules on a large two-sided sheet of paper.
Aside from the monsters, the die, and the sheet of stickers, and the rules, everything else is made pleasingly thick, colorfully-illustrated, fun-to-punch-out cardboard.
You play with 2-4 players.
The first thing you do, after you’ve finished sticking the stickers, and punching out the tokens is put all the 81 monster tokens into stacks – one stack for each kind of monster. There are six kinds of monsters, and there are six tokens of the largest and fifteen each of the other five.
When it’s your turn to add a monster, you first roll the die to determine which monster you will be pushing on to the platform. One side of the die has a question mark. If you roll that, you must select a monster from one of the highest stacks. The larger the monster, the more difficult it will be to herd onto the Arena without pushing another monster (or two, or several) off. You then place that monster on the longer monster pusher, and use the smaller pusher to slide that monster until it is completely onto the Arena, with no part hanging off.
The scoring system is particularly ingenious:Each kind of monster is a different size. Each kind of monster token is a different width – the smaller the monster, the narrower the token. When monsters fall off the Arena, every player (except for the player whose turn it was) gets a token of that monster type. The players then arrange their tokens in a line, and the player with the longest line at the end of the game wins.
Turns are relatively short. The whole game can be played in less than 30 minutes (even the excessively cautious will find their caution kept in check by the collective impatience of the other players). No reading is involved so younger players will be able to understand the game almost immediately. It does take a steady hand and some degree of reasoning to determine where is the most monster-accommodating place in the arena. But it’s a fun and funny game, and some success for each player is all but guaranteed.
Designed by Wolfgang Dirscherl and Manfried Reiendl, with art by Claus Stephan and Michael Hüter; is available from Queen Games, for children ages 5 to 85.