Daring Dustbunnies

In Daring Dustbunnies, players are the dustbunnies themselves, a bunch of adrenaline junkies who live under the sofa, but like to dare each other to get closest to the vacuum when it appears – the danger, of course, being that you may get sucked in.

The boards make up a track between the safety of the start line and the vacuum itself, and how many you use depends on how many players you have. Regardless of player count though, all dustbunnies take part in this race, with the players secretly given their own identity: a Fate token tells you what colour you are in this race, but you’ll not want the other players to know!

Over a series of rounds all players play a card from their limited hand – each one moves one of the dustbunnies forwards along the track. If the bunny you moved arrives in an empty space, you take the action there (they are all very straightforward). If it arrives in an occupied space, you take static equal to the number of dustbunnies present. Static is good, because you can pay static to play the special rules-breaking Charm cards, which do all manner of mad stuff. If you run out of movement cards, you draw back up to four and get a free Charm card into the bargain. The goal is to be closest to the vacuum when the round ends, and that happens when there are no bunnies left on the start line and only one (or none) on each space of the track. The three closest players pick up gold, silver and bronze medals, and a new round begins. After the final round, the player with the most gold medals wins, with silver and then bronze acting as tie-breakers.

A couple of extra wrinkles: some cards activate the dog or cat, who can be used to move a dustbunny of your choice. And everyone starts with a Wire token which can be used to move you backwards (very helpful if you’re about to end up in the vacuum bag!) by the amount of static you have.