Tear Up Your Money to Cover Your Costs (Literally) in Rip Off

How far can you make your money go? Tear off pieces and find out! Will you be able to cover more objects than your opponents before it’s all gone?

Rip Off, published by Blue Orange Games, is a game of visual perception. Tear your bill into as many pieces as possible, while still covering up as many objects on the cards as you can.

Gameplay

The deck of cards is shuffled. Each card is double sided and features objects of different shapes and sizes; it might be a pool toy, a box of doughnuts, or an umbrella, for example. You then draw three cards and set them out in the center of the table. Each player is given a $100 bill (it's fake, unfortunately!).

Each round, players attempt to tear off a piece of their bill that will be large enough to completely cover at least two of the objects shown on the cards (the piece does not have to cover them at the same time). You are not allowed to measure the object in any way or bring the bill closer to the cards. Once everyone has torn a piece off, they take turns laying their piece down first over one of the objects, and then over the second. If your piece covered both objects, you move onto the next round. If it did not, you must tear off a new piece and try again. If you ever run out of bill and must tear off a piece, you are out of the game.

After everyone has placed a piece over two objects or been eliminated, the three cards are removed, the torn off pieces of bill discarded, and three new cards are dealt out and another round begins. There are special action cards in the deck, as well. Some of these will mean you only have to cover one object this round, while some will force you to tear off a piece that can cover all three.

The game ends once all but one player is eliminated, with the last player remaining declared as the winner. Or, if no remaining players are able to pass on to the next round, the player with the largest piece left is the winner.

Review

Rip Off is a unique and unusual concept. While you may be asked to tear up game pieces in a legacy game, we’ve never encountered a game where the tearing is the main gameplay mechanic, and it’s honestly quite fun.

Since there are lots of objects included on the cards and they vary significantly in shape and size, the challenge of the game fluctuates. It may be easy to tear off a small piece one turn to cover two objects, but the more unusual the shapes, the more difficult the game is going to be. We liked this unpredictability of how tough each turn was.

There is also a certain push-your-luck element to the game. Since you can only look at the objects and then take your best guess as to what sized piece you need to tear off from your bill, you can choose whether to be safe and tear off a bit more than you think you need, or try to conserve as much of your bill as possible. Also, since different players may choose different objects to try for, even though everyone starts with the same shaped bill, differences quickly emerge which bring their own challenges. This leads to some fun late game rounds.

Since you do tear up the bills as you go, there is technically a limited number of times you can play Rip Off, but even if you were to play the game at max player count you have enough bills to play thirty-three times, and with a price tag of $13, this feels more than reasonable.

We would not recommend playing the game at higher player counts of five or six players, however, as there’s going to be a bit of a lull in gameplay as each player checks to see if their piece covers the card, and the speed of the game is one of its strengths (particularly when tied with player elimination).

It’s light, it’s fast, and it’s an unusual idea that’s still quite easy to teach. Not a lot of games are built around ideas of visual perception, and this one comes with an enjoyable tactile experience.

Pros: Unusual idea, plenty of bills included, variety in the objects on the cards

Cons: Increased downtime at higher player counts

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.