Honk! Review

I like to think of myself as a semi-keen birder. On my occasional ambles along the coasts and marshes of Hampshire, I’ve witnessed several of the UK’s seven hosted species of geese and found them to be…fine. Not particularly musical or pretty, but fine. Coincidentally, I feel the same about HONK! too.

HONK! is a simple but charmingly produced set collection game for families looking to round up a gaggle of escaped geese and collect the most eggs. Setup involves laying out a number of golden eggs facedown – each worth one to three points. Atop this, a gaggle like no other will be amassed (typically thirty-two chunky cardboard geese), resulting in one of the most curious looking table-states in the hobby.

In turn, players will be either taking two different cards from the stacks of five food types or spending cards to acquire a goose. To feed a goose it must be on top of this fowl mound, with no other geese covering it before it can be taken, whereupon the player is gifted with eggs. The number of eggs rises sequentially depending on how many geese of that type are already held. Furthermore, any golden eggs uncovered are taken by the active player.

This is the game in its entirety. Whilst there’s touches of strategy here, HONK! is really just a twenty minute burst of silly fun let down by a lack of interesting decision making and the fact that (despite its quirkiness) set collecting has simply been done better. Even for younger players, HONK! suffers from being a tad too slow, with kids likely bemoaning the fact that they won’t net their first goose until at least their third turn. Nevertheless, in all its goofiness HONK! is sure to put a smile back on your face if you’re ever in a ‘fowl’ mood…

CHAD WILKINSON

PLAY IT? MAYBE

Designer: Matt West

Publisher: Sinister Fish Games

Time: 20 minutes

Players: 2-5

Ages: 5+

Price: £18

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