Designed by: Scott Almes
Chicken! is a race game for 2-8 players that takes 10-20 minutes.
Each player chooses a racing piece and the eight yellow and orange dice are placed on the board, in the ‘coop’. The starting player takes the four white dice.
A game of chicken begins with that player rolling the white dice. There are four different sides: chickens represent movement up the board, blanks are nothing, foxes are a danger – three foxes means you’re bust and your turn is over – and eggs give ‘birth’ to more dice, which get added from the board: yellow first, then if there are none more, the orange. And the orange dice in particular are both more rewarding – lots of chickens -n but more risky: lots of foxes. Each player gets one optional re-roll on their turn – not including chickens or foxes – so can choose to stop or push their luck and hope for no more foxes. After the second roll (-or the first, if you stuck!) and assuming you haven’t bust, your piece will move up the track equal to the number of chickens you have. If you did bust, any yellow and orange dice are returned to the coop.
Note that – again, if you didn’t bust – any eggs on your second roll still add more dice! These, along with all your other dice, get passed on to the next player. They have a choice of rolling everything, or they can ‘chicken out’ and sacrifice a point in order to revert to start their turn with the four white dice. The first player to reach 25 points wins.
There's no direct interaction at all.
Depends on the number of players - Chicken is probably best with 4-5 players - with more it gets a little protracted.
Nothing to keep you awake at night
It's a dice game, and there's not a whole lot else going on. But it's a fun one, that doesn't outstay its turn on the table.
2-8
Players
6+
Years
15-30
Mins
Sam says
The rules for Chicken as-published 'work' in that they are functional, but the game lacks something: the only risk in rolling loads of dice is the three foxes, so players are almost never tempted to 'chicken out'; making the rule almost irrelevant and the game devoid of decisions. We play that if you get three foxes on a re-roll, you lose points equal to the number of chickens you've rolled. This makes high-rolling more risk-laden and more dramatic, and the 'chicken out' option becomes more tempting. It's still silly enough to be fun, but seeing players suddenly lurch backwards is a lot more funny than simply rolling tonnes of dice and nothing happening. With a large number of players it's worth considering how it ends too: someone crossing the line doesn't instantly win, but all players have equal turns and so anyone who's had one fewer turn has a chance to catch up - and potentially overtake - the possible winner.