Preview: Keep It Clean in Baby Ninjas Card Game

Battle it out to be the cleanest baby ninja. You never know when the round will end so you always need to be prepared!

Currently on Kickstarter, Baby Ninjas is a fast-playing card game with memory, social deduction, and bluffing elements.

Gameplay

There are clean diaper tokens and dirty diaper tokens. The game also comes with small envelopes. Each envelope has a unique icon marked on it to help you track which one is which during the game.

At the start of each round, based on the number of players still in the game, you take a certain number of dirty diaper tokens and a certain number of clean diaper tokens. You shuffle the tokens and without looking at them put one in each envelope and give each player an envelope. You may not look at your token. Finally, one clean diaper token is placed in an envelope that is put in the center of the table.

On your turn, you must do one of two options. The first option is to play one-to-three action cards from your hand, before drawing back up to five cards. Action cards have different abilities such as allowing you to peek at a token in an envelope, swap envelopes, or move envelopes around the table. Rather than play action cards, you may choose to perform a rear ending action, if you have three action cards that have this special icon on them. When you play three of these, the round immediately ends unless another player can also perform a rear ending action to cancel it.

There are also 'reek havoc' cards in the deck. When you draw one of these on your turn, you immediately play it, before drawing another card to replace it in your hand. The round will end if three of these cards are on the table.

When the round ends, everyone opens their envelopes. Any player with a dirty diaper token is eliminated. If there are any players still left in the game, you start a new round. You keep playing until there is only one player left in the game, who is declared the winner.

Review

Baby Ninjas is a fun game of back and forth interaction, trying to get the right envelope, trying to remember which tokens you’ve seen and where they are, trying to end each round at just the right moment, or desperately moving the envelopes around as the reek havoc cards start to pile up.

There are some really fun ability cards in the deck. The most enjoyable of these are the ‘Code of Honor’ and ‘Code of Dishonor’ cards, which you pass face-down to another player, they look at it, you may then ask them a yes or no question and they must tell the truth or lie depending on the card type. The card is discarded face-down so the other players don’t know which one it was.

Elements like this, as well as cards that allow you to swap other players' envelopes with each other, or having all envelopes pass in various directions, lead to fun player interaction, choices, and suspense.

There is player elimination in the game, so it is possible for a round to start and you’re not in it. However, this doesn’t really feel punishing as the rounds are quite fast and there is a certain enjoyment to the tension that builds each time someone lasts one more round.

The theme isn’t going to be for everyone. This is obviously supposed to be a fun game, not to be taken too seriously, but for some players the humor of the theme is simply going to be a little too crude, while for others they’ll find it amusing and want to play it because of that. So you’ll want to be sure of your game group and what type of humor appeals to them before introducing them to the game.

Baby Ninjas is fast, enjoyable, and easy to learn. The memory element of trying to track what is in each envelope is challenging, the rules are simple, and the cards do a good job of telling you what each one does. There is plenty of player interaction and moments you’re going to laugh at. If the theme amuses you, check the game out on Kickstarter.

Pros: Speed of rounds, fun card abilities, player interaction

Cons: The theme will turn some players off

Disclosure: this preview is a paid promotion that is based on our evaluation of an unpublished prototype of this game, which is subject to change prior to publication.