Review: Bag of Butts (Loosey Goosey Games) – English

“Eat a bag of butts!” sounds like something Bart Simpson might say: an edgy remark from a pre-pubescent boy during the 80s or 90s. Bag of Butts is also the name of a push-your-luck game where players pull wooden butts out of a bag. Does it make sense to you yet? Is this game arsesome or poopoo?

In Bag of Butts, each player chooses a colour with which they will score points during the game. Each turn, the active player draws butts from the bag in three groups. The active player indicates how many butts he or she draws from the bag in the first or second group. The remaining butts form the last group. The active player then chooses which group will score points. Of the chosen group, each player with one or more butts in that group gets points. For each butt in the right colour, a player gets one point plus one point for each special butt that comes out of the bag. Special butts?

Bag of Butts contains special butts. Each turn, the active player first adds a random butt to the bag or this player chooses to remove all special butts from the bag. Special butts earn extra points, but these butts are so special that they do even more. If each group contains a special butt, the turn is over immediately and all butts are removed from the bag. It is therefore a risk to play with many special butts; as you have to but some (butt)skin in the game.

A player may just choose a group with black butts to score, grey butts earn extra points while scoring a group, beige butts count as an extra butt in the colour of the active player and white butts earn an extra turn.

Still not quite clear? That’s possible, because Bag of Butts is primarily an activity that involves a lot of luck. The game contains a good dose of push-your-luck the players mainly influence the game by deciding whether to refresh the special buttocks and how many buttocks a group consists of. Bag of Butts therefore contains less strategy and is better suited as a party game for a small group while enjoying a snack or a drink.