Monstrous target
Oh no! The kids aren't eating their greens again. Those pushed-aside peas are going to mutate!
Creepeas is a quick, silly card game for 2-5 players that runs about 15-30 minutes and is pitched at ages 5 and up. You play as lab workers secretly stitching together monsters from peas, hence the name. It's a light matching-and-chaining game aimed at families with kids, or a casual group of silly friends.
I have a group of spooky lab friends who are into monster-making, but our day-job shifts don't line up with our get-togethers. So this review is based on the experience of a family with teens.
Mutating Peas
The goal is to complete more monsters than your lab opponents. Players combine cards showing heads, limbs and body parts. There's no limit to how big you can build, but only the heads carry peas, and those peas are your points, so a monster's size doesn't affect the score at all.
A monster can have multiple heads (more peas!) or be made of endless limbs. It all comes down to which parts are available for your picking and how monstrous your Creepeas turn out.
The catch is the "mismonsters," which smack you with penalties if you don't finish them. Each incomplete monster deducts points based on the number of pea splats it carries. The game ends when the final card is drawn, and the player with the most peas on their completed Creepeas wins.
Enter the Lab
There are two variants: the Original Variant for casual play, and the Breeding Variant for a bigger challenge. In the Breeding Variant, you draw a breeding card showing a tray shape (which depends on player count), and the first player to complete their tray with Creepeas wins. Apart from that, both variants play like the Original.
Setup: The 101 monster cards are punched-out cardboard, which makes them very easy to grab off a surface. We shuffle-cut the deck and stack it high, face down. The rulebook lists how many monster cards to draw based on player count. Cards show either an open or a closed eye, and only the open-eye cards are turned face up. A yellow microscope card is added to the selection line (not required in a 2-player game).
Rounds: The youngest player goes first and chooses 2 cards, then turns continue in clockwise order. Whoever takes the microscope gets first pick next round. If nobody takes it, the same player picks first again. If the last card left in the line is a monster card, it goes into the discard pile. At the start of each round, a fresh line is drawn, and whoever took the microscope before puts it back into the line.
Building: Cards must be placed vertically, and each Creepea must be a single colour: red, green or blue. Joker limbs (RGB) can be used on any Creepeas. You can build multiple Creepeas at once, but if a Creepeas has more than one head, the heads can't sit directly next to or above one another, so a connecting piece is needed.
Chain Matching
We started the first few rounds sabotaging each other's selection phase, as some of us didn't start with a head and had no idea which way our mutations were heading. Once heads started popping up, they went fast (that's where the points are!), and it became every lab worker for themselves. Then the connecting pieces and limbs were snatched up like "my preciousss" as we raced to complete our Creepeas, or the unfortunate mismonster.
Mismonsters are grey Creepeas that hide among the closed-eye cards, so you never know your misfortune until they're in your hand. They also mess with your valid Creepeas, since you may have to give up limbs to finish the mismonster and avoid penalties.
Players can rearrange limbs into any combination during play. With limbs appearing left, right and centre, decisions are made on the fly, and the game is more luck than planning, which keeps it fast-paced and unpredictable.
Rinse and RePEAt
Does the humour hold up after repeated plays? I'd say yes. It's so hilarious. We had great laughs giving the monsters voiceovers; we felt each of them came with their own personality. You never know how your Creepeas will turn out until you reach the end. However, you'll need a big playing area, potentially the floor. As tableau size varies each time, you'll soon discover Creepeas like to invade your space. There’s no telling whether your monstrosity will grow tall or wide.
The short setup and playtime encourage back-to-back games. It's entirely push-your-luck with a side of blind picking, but the theme suits the game, and the variety of monsters and limbs means a different tableau every time.
PEA-nishing Thoughts
Creepeas has great ap-PEA-l for kids thanks to its vibrant and wacky artwork. It's a good fit for families and casual gamers who want a quick, goofy game.
Having played both variants, we preferred the Original. Three of the four of us completed our trays, so Breeding is doable, but after sessions of the Original where we'd barely thought about strategy, it felt rigid and overly thinky by comparison.
The casual feel of the Original definitely suits a family with different gaming experiences. With rules this easy to grasp, the recommended age range of 5+ is spot on. I bet my lab friends will knock the Breeding Variant out of the park when we finally get to it.
