Oh, no! Monsters have come to the town of Sprinkleton, and they’re eating all of the doughnuts! It’s up to us—or you and up to five other players—to catch these bakery bandits.
Monster Match, from North Star Games, is a fast-paced matching extravaganza where players try to catch as many monsters as possible and collect the doughnuts back. Players are racing against each other to catch these sweet criminals because doughnuts are precious AF.
The best part about this game is that it has three main rules, making it easy to start playing right away. Roll the dice, find the matching monsters, and the players with the most doughnut points at the end wins! The pair of die indicates what kind of monster you’re looking for. One dice has numbers 0 through 5, and the other has a symbol for eyes, legs, or arms. So, if you roll “2 legs,” you must find a monster on the table with two legs.
There are 10 monsters on a table at each time, so once the die are rolled, it’s game on to match the monsters with what was just rolled until there are no more matches left. If there are no matches to begin with, be the first player to grab the zilch token and claim a monster. If you get too eager and catch the wrong monster, then you must return one from your pile.
The biggest challenge is trying to be fast enough to process what’s going on the die and then seeing what monsters on the table has it. The game moves quickly and each round can last less than 10 seconds, guaranteeing lots of laughs, screams, and “oh nos!” along the way.
The illustrations on the cards are hilarious. They feature the monsters in their mug shots, and each has vibrant colors, goofy smiles, mischievous facial expressions, and different styles. The bottom right corner shows one to three frosted goodies, indicating how many doughnut points that card is worth.
Monster Match is part of North Star Games’ new Happy Planet line of games, where all of the games in the line share the same quality of making people happier as they’re playing it. The new line of games was inspired by the response to the company’s Happy Salmon card game, a game of mini celebrations, which left players always laughing and having a good time.
Soooooorrrryyy if the “Monster Mash” song is stuck in your head right now from reading this review (or typing it over and over by accident instead of writing Monster Match). If you’re boogieing like us, then bust a move with some of other North Star Games’ Happy Planet Games, such as Funky Chicken!
