Tamagotchi Collections – It’s Potty Time

Do you remember the maddeningly cute and maddeningly stressful toys that were the Tamagotchis? You had to interact with this pixelated creature, ensuring it was well-fed, cared for, and even cleaned up after.

Tamagotchi Collections, designed by Marina Common with art by Gwyneth Moore and Lauren Yu, takes that experience and brings it to life in a board game. Collections is an action-management board game for 2-4 players ages 8 and up and is published by Kess Entertainment in partnership with Bandai.

Setup

Give each player a dashboard and tokens to track Happiness and Poop. Shuffle the Tamagotchi Eggs and place them face down. Deal two to each player – they place these face up (hatched) into Rooms on their dashboard.

Form the Shop by placing the three Shop tokens (a Spade, a Club, and a Diamond) in a column. Place two Shop cards and a Playdate card in each row.

Form supply piles of the Food tokens (cookies) and extra Playdate tokens near the Shop for easy access. Shuffle the Playdate minigame cards and set them to the side for use during the Playdate minigames.

Whichever player has the most animals starts the game.

Gameplay

There are six actions a player could potentially take on their turn, always in the following order: Roll, Poop, Play, Hatch, Shop, Minigame.

Start your turn by taking dice equal to the number of your hatched (face-up) Tamagotchi and rolling them.

Then comes the Poop phase. Yes, these Tamagotchi, just like the old electronic ones, poop. A lot. If a die face matches any of your hatched Tamagotchi, that Tamagotchi poops once. Even if multiple dice have the same face, each Tamagotchi can poop only once. Move your Poop tracker up one for each Tamagotchi that poops.

All Pooped Out

If, at the end of the Poop phase, your Poop tracker has reached the seventh spot, your Tamagotchi get sick. Discard any accumulated Food Tokens from the Tamagotchi, discard your dice, reset the Poop tracker to 0, and end your turn.

Any of your Tamagotchi that match a die face may also Play with an Item card stashed in their room.

If you have an unhatched Tamagotchi Egg that matches any die, you can Hatch that Egg, flipping it over to show its Tamagotchi.

Let’s Go Shopping!

After all that is done, players can spend each die to gain an Egg, Shop card, or Playdate token.

If you have an empty Room you can take an Egg. To do so discard any one die and take the Egg from the top of the Egg deck. Place the unhatched Egg into any empty Room on your board. If you bought the Egg with a die that matches the Egg’s symbol, it immediately hatches into a new Tamagotchi!

Purchase cards from the Shop, by discarding a die that matches the symbol on the Shop row.

Care cards immediately boost a Tamagotchi’s Happy value and typically have a one-time effect.

Food cards add a Food token (and boost the Poop tracker) but also add to the Tamagotchi’s Happy tracker. If you feed the Tamagotchi its favorite Food, they get an extra Food token and Happy point!

After buying an Item card, choose a room in which to place it above the Tamagotchi. It will stay in that room and provide an extra action during the Play phase any time the Tamagotchi in that room matches one of the dice.

Buy a Playdate token using the die face for its row and immediately get a small reward. You might get another reward later, once all the Playdate tokens have been taken.

They’re All Grown Up

When a Tamagotchi’s Happy tracker reaches the fourth spot, that Tamagotchi immediately grows up.

Take that Tamagotchi – and any food tokens on it – from the dashboard, and set it aside. Reset that Happy tracker to zero and keep playing.

Taking Tamagotchis on a Playdate

After removing all of the Playdate tokens from a Playdate card, all players who have a matching Playdate token from that row get to bring their Tamagotchis out to play.

The minigames all revolve around using the same deck of cards. Each one uses simple concepts where players try to get close to a target (sometimes known, sometimes unknown). Whichever player(s) win, they get the big reward at the bottom of the Playdate card – or they can choose to immediately “grow up” a Tamagotchi.

At the end of your turn, refill the Shop and Playdate columns if any cards were removed. Play passes to the left.

Game End & Scoring

Tamagotchi Collections ends when players cannot properly refill the Shop or Playdate columns, or the Egg deck is empty.

Players then add up their points. Each grown up Tamagotchi is four points, hatched Tamagotchis still in Rooms are two points, and Food tokens banked when Tamagotchis grew up are one point each. Unhatched Eggs aren’t worth points. The player with the most points wins!

Impressions

I remember when Tamagotchi took over in the late 1990s. The little eggs with the pixelated screens and cute creatures were almost everywhere. So, when I heard about Tamagotchi Collections, I was quite curious to see if a board game could deliver on the cuteness and the stress of trying to keep these tiny electronic beasts alive.

For the most part, Tamagotchi Collections delivers thematically. You have to feed these Tamagotchi, clean up after them, and play with them in order to win this game. The art, whether it’s the Tamagotchi Eggs or the Shop and Playdate cards, delivers, too. It’s not earth-shattering, but it’s definitely cute, which is exactly how it should be.

But that’s all this game is. It’s cute, and it’s nostalgic for those of us who remember fighting to keep that pixelated beast alive.  It just doesn’t offer much beyond its cute exterior. It can also overstay its welcome if you follow the normal setup rules. The rulebook notes: “For a shorter game, discard 15 Shop cards and 2 Playdate cards after shuffling.” We think the shorter game is a a better experience.

Overall, Tamagotchi Collections is a fine game for someone who wants to revel in nostalgia or introduce that cute-but-frustrating experience to young children. However, if you weren’t a fan of Tamagotchi back then, you will likely have a hard time enjoying this game.

If you’re ready to hatch some eggs you can find Tamagotchi Collections direct from Kess Entertainment, on Amazon, or at your local game store.

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Tamagotchi Collections from Kess Entertainment for this review.

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