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Mascotas

Do you remember Tamagotchi? They were a popular fad in the 1990s: an electronic toy in the shape of an egg that, when activated, displayed an egg that hatched into an electronic pet alien or dinosaur. You'd interact with your pet by pressing buttons on the device which variously represented food, water and discipline for training. If you didn't care sufficiently for your pet, feed it and clean it up, it would 'die'. Parents found the toys infuriating but it proved to be a popular craze: Bandai, the manufacturers, reputedly sold more than 80 million of them!



What's the relevance of this to Mascotas? Well, Mascotas is the Spanish word for Pets, and this game from Spanish publisher Atomo is thematically akin to a card game Tamagotchi analogue. The 2-8 players each have a hidden card that allocates to them one of the four pets (a dog, hamster, fish and tortoise) represented by large-format cards on the table. For each pet there will be cards that meet its four specific care needs.


Players have a hand of four cards with the various 'cares' and with actions (for example, to make a pet ill by giving it fleas, or supplying a vet to cure illness). On your turn you have to play a card to one of the pets and you draw a replacement. To win, the pet for which you have the hidden card must have all four of its cares satisfied and must be neither angry or unwell.



Mascotas then is a hidden role set collection game. Tho' it takes up to eight players, it can become unbalanced if two players hold the same pet card and other pets are only held by one player. For that reason, we much prefer this as a three or four player game where tho' ownership is still hidden no pet is owned by more than one player. That said the deck includes some chaotic action cards that can swap goal cards between players, so if you're playing with more than four players and so have two sharing the same goal, another player detecting this can take advantage of it by playing one of the action cards that switches goal cards so they take the advantaged pet for themselves.


Tho' Raúl López and Juan C Ruiz have designed Mascotas as a children's game with jokey cartoon art by Francisco Millán, older players can have a lot of fun with it; trying to throw others off the scent by feinting care cards to other pets or by playing a negative state (illness/anger) on the pet you want to win, perhaps knowing you have a card in hand that can remedy that state or move it on to another pet.


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