You might be sitting there wondering what Bogos Binted means. Trust me, so are we. There comes a time when inventing your own alien language begins to work against you. At least Uno is just in Spanish. So, I was initially wary of Bogos Binted. I played a couple of solo matches and began to warm to it. Then I gathered together my friend group, played a game where my laser gun backfired and blew my head off, and I began to fall in love.
It’s an extremely simple game, through and through, but in the same way that Uno is simple. You can learn the rules of each game in about five minutes, but it feels fresh and new each time because there’s so much randomness involved. That said, Uno comes with a nice instruction manual, and Bogos Binted‘s biggest problem is how bad it is at explaining things. Alien nonsense notwithstanding. It raises the question of whether Bogos Binted is truly great, or if it’s just the company of my friends that I was enjoying.
Extra-terrestrial Card Sharks
The simplest way for me to describe Bogos Binted is to go through its five game types. First up is Zogblorp. Yes, they’re all named like that. In this one you need to lay down number cards, but without going over the number in the centre. If you’re the one that goes over, you have to inflate your head, which has a chance of killing you. Special cards can force other players to lay, or mess with the total. I very much enjoyed this one. It’s like playing blackjack while everyone holds a gun to the head of the player on the right.
We didn’t gel as much with Zinky Zoogle, where everyone has to lay a higher card than the last one. It’s alright, but all the special cards are just for wiping out previous cards and it wasn’t tremendously exciting. Beeple Meep is better, where you’re given a ‘rank’ of card to match. They range from Knight to King, with a set number in the deck. Therefore, you often need to bluff. If you think someone is bluffing, you can slam the button and challenge them. If you’re right, they inflate their head, if you’re wrong, then you inflate. It’s essentially the card game cheat (or its less PG name), and I enjoyed it.
Alien Dentistry
Next up in Bogos Binted‘s library is Vorp, a social deduction game. Basically, you have to write a clue that points towards a word in front of you, but there’s an impostor who can only see the general category. Everyone votes on who they think is the imposter. Didn’t gel as much with this one, as there are plenty of more dedicated social deduction games that we could be playing. By far and away the best game, though, is Zoggy. Essentially it’s that crocodile game where you press down the teeth, only the crocodile is a gross alien that will bite your head off if you get it wrong.
I’d say, in general, most of the games are hits. Some hit harder than others, but they were reliably fun. Still though, I’d recommend playing with friends before dipping a toe into online, as Bogos Binted is pretty bad at explaining the rules. Zogblorp is the only game with solo play, for example, which is baffling. This would be a great place to learn the rules, so you can clue your friends in. Otherwise you get a few pages of text, which in Vorp’s case didn’t really help. Also, not to harp on, but the alien names make things needlessly confusing. I did a rundown of the games after our session, and nearly every game name was met with ‘which one was that again’?
Bogos Binted? – Stupid Good Fun
There are other bits outside of the games though. For one, interacting with other players is good fun. You have a range of emotes, including flipping the bird. By far the most used one was the spit emote, which led to the odd moment where I spat on my wife’s corpse. Best not dwell on that. There are also things on the table that you can fiddle with, which helps to pass the time if someone’s pondering over which card to lay. It’s hard to be bored while playing Bogos Binted.
And it’s that which makes me think that Bogos Binted is actually great. The card games are kept remarkably simple, so you can fall into a game quickly, and it gives you just enough toys that you keep generating wonderful moments. Like that whole ‘laser gun backfiring’ thing. It also adds a little bit of darkness with the head exploding, while keeping a lightness of tone elsewhere. It’s something that will probably slot easily into game night, as it kept us laughing for hours.
Oh, and I Googled it. ‘Bogos Binted’ is a reference to a meme. Thanks for making me feel old, guys.
