[Ad – Gifted Products] We have a tradition of playing with board games every other Monday, at our local Geek Retreat, where we find ourselves spending some wind-down after the first school and work day of the week. We’ve been exploring a bunch of the Dogman board games, so went on to play Dogman 20,000 Fleas Under the Sea as Robin is such a big Dogman fan! We often feel that getting the board games that contain these book characters really encourages reading in our household.
Dog Man 20,000 Fleas Under the Sea Board Game is a game where the players are sort of against a baddie, that is also is looking to complete a submarine before you have gained all of the items (collectively) to defeat them. Instead of dice, players spin a spinner to move across a bunch of circles on a submarine. You can end up landing on a Super Buddy Power place, which triggers Super Buddy Power tokens on the board, giving players the ability to move double spaces when the spinner is spun, a sub repair space that allows you to get a sub repair part, or a Switch or Build space which allows players to either switch with another player on the board or reveal all face down sub repair cards and look for matches, to build up your own submarine. There is also the pie space, which I will talk about below.
The box of the Dog Man 20,000 Fleas Under the Sea Board Game is really quite good, as this is what brings together your submarine and works as a big monster that you end up throwing pies into. If you miss the face, the baddie gets to have their go, where they can try to build their own, much smaller submarine and mess with your work. I do like that building your submarine goes sort of over the face of the monster, which can make things more tricky!
Robin instantly knew all of the characters and about how this board game related to the Dogman story, which is always fantastic. We weren’t the best at flicking pie tokens into the mouth of the monster, but had a fun time trying, coming out barely losing in the end. I think the board itself is very easy to follow, as there is a lot of freedom in deciding where to go and what to do next, but at the same time, you do all need to work together and make group decisions. It’s a decent, casual game.