Designed by: Reiner Knizia
Kariba is a game of collecting animal cards – each card is worth a point, and how you collect them is by scaring lesser animals away from the waterhole by visiting with more powerful ones…
In the box is a small set of cardboard edges that fit together to form the octagonal waterhole; each edge having a number from 1 up to 8. The game itself is a deck of animal cards, also numbered from 1 (the tiny mice) up to 8 (the massive elephant). Each player is dealt five cards, and how play proceeds is very simple: on your turn, you may add as many cards as you like of the same number to the matching-numbered side of the waterhole. If you add the third of any particular number (or any higher number than three: fourth/fifth/sixth etc) then that group of animals scares away the next lowest set, and you keep the scared-away cards as points.
For instance, if you added the third Giraffe card (number 4) you would scare away the zebras (value 3) or, if there are no zebras, then the meerkats (2) or, should there be no meerkats either, the mice (1). If there are no cards to scare away, you get nothing. The meerkats only scare away the mice, and the lowly mice might be lowest on the foodchain but they are the only animal who can scare away the elephants (and only the elephants) who, as everyone knows, are terrified of mice.
After playing your card/s, you replenish your hand back up to five, and the game continues until one player has run out of cards entirely.
Neat little slip of a game. Not one I'll twist anyone's arm to play, but enjoyable.
No direct interaction, but you'll often find another player swoops in to grab that collection of ostriches just before you were going to.
Very low .
Low, but not entirely absent.
The flavour of the game doesn't change, but it's rather moreish anyway.
2-4
Players
6+
Years
5-15
Mins
Sam says
A neat little game that, whilst luck plays a significant part, does ask clever decisions of you. Memory plays a part too, as noting which cards have already gone can help, but I like the way you can sacrifice cards to entice others to play matching cards you might subsequently grab yourself. It's a game that has less control with more players however, and the tactical battle of wits is more readily apparent with 2 or 3 at most.