Roll the Dice and Wrangle the Wildlife in A Fistful of Penguins

Gather up an assortment of creatures to fill your zoo. Having trouble chasing them down? The penguins will help!

Published by Wattsalpoag Games, A Fistful of Penguins is a push-your-luck dice game for 1-6 players with a 15-30 minute game time.

Gameplay

The game is played over three rounds. Each round, every player gets one turn. Each player starts the game with six penguin tokens and $10 worth of chips.

On your turn during the first round, you get four dice; in round two, you get five, and in round three you get six. When you roll your dice, you can either choose to stop rolling and cash in your dice results, or you can spend one penguin to roll an extra die to add to your results or to reroll as many dice as you wish. You can spend as many penguins on your turn as you have penguins to spend. If you roll any penguins on your turn, you can cash them in immediately, without ending your turn, to have more penguin tokens. Once a die has been cashed in for a penguin, it cannot be used again on your turn.

Other than penguins, dice can roll squirrels, moose, kangaroos, lions, and camels. They each score points, when cashed in, in unique ways. If you cash in one squirrel, you steal one $1 chip from the player on your left. If you cash in two, you steal that as well as $2 from the next player. The more squirrels, the more players you steal from, taking increasing amounts.

Each moose is worth $9, unless you also have a squirrel, in which case it is worth $0. Each kangaroo is worth points equal to the number you are cashing in. So, if you rolled three kangaroos, they are each worth $3. If you cash them in and earn points during the first round, you also earn a kangaroo chip. If you cash them in during the second round and earn points for them, you earn a double kangaroo chip. A kangaroo chip can be used on a future round to turn one or two dice over to a kangaroo result. When you cash in a lion, you must choose whether to take the money for it. Each lion is worth $7, but if you take the chips for a lion, only lions and penguins can earn you points that round. Camels are worth $5 each but $0 if you have any lions showing on your dice (even if you choose not to score the lions).

Penguin tokens carry over from one round to the next. Each unused penguin token is worth $1 at the end of the game. The player with the most money at the end of the three rounds wins the game.

Review

A Fistful of Penguins follows a lot of the same ideas as other push-your-luck dice games. If you’re familiar with those, you’ll probably have a pretty good idea whether or not you’re going to enjoy this one. There are some interesting scoring mechanics with the different animals, which interact with each other in clever ways, evolving between the rounds as more dice are added to the pool.

Having the penguin tokens carry over from round to round adds a layer of strategy to the gameplay that helps the game stand out. Do you want to hold off until the later rounds to spend penguins, when you can potentially have higher-scoring rolls? Which is more valuable: rerolls or additional dice?

Players are faced with fun choices that don’t overcomplicate the turns too much but do force you to take a minute to weigh your options and consider your best course of action. The squirrels add a take-that element that works well in helping to keep the game’s ending result unpredictable.

There are useful cheat sheets for each player to help track how things score, which is helpful for learning the game. However, the chips are a bit flimsy and the dice, while cute, could be more solid and enjoyable to roll.

For a game that was first released nearly 15 years ago, A Fistful of Penguins is an admirable game that has stood the test of time. It is a classic for a reason — a simple, fun dice game that feels fresh while playing quickly and offering a cute theme.

Pros: Penguin token carryover adds more strategy to rerolling, animals score and interact with each other in fun ways

Cons: Components could use an upgrade

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