It's been snowing in parts of the UK over the last couple of days, making me break out the more chilly themed games, such as Hey that's my Fish! The sub-zero game of fishy strategy for 2-4 players, by Fantasy Flight Games.
In Hey that's my Fish!, you act as a greedy penguin family trying to grab all the fish you can for the long Winter, it's every penguin for himself! Your penguins must race across the rapidly dwindling ice floe to collect the juiciest fish and block off your rivals. But be careful, if your penguin gets stuck on an ice floe and is cast off from the others, they are eliminated and will float off forever more.
It's been snowing in parts of the UK over the last couple of days, making me break out the more chilly themed games, such as Hey that's my Fish! The sub-zero game of fishy strategy for 2-4 players, by Fantasy Flight Games.
In Hey that's my Fish!, you act as a greedy penguin family trying to grab all the fish you can for the long Winter, it's every penguin for himself! Your penguins must race across the rapidly dwindling ice floe to collect the juiciest fish and block off your rivals. But be careful, if your penguin gets stuck on an ice floe and is cast off from the others, they are eliminated and will float off forever more.
Seemingly simple, your goal will be thwarted by devious penguins and an ever-shrinking game board. What strategy will you construct to bypass the competition?
Set Up
Shuffle all ice floe tiles together facedown, and then flip and arrange them in a grid, with a horizontal line of 7 tiles at the top, followed underneath by a line of 8 tiles, followed by a line of 7 tiles etc. until you have a diagram that looks like a rough square. Players can choose to rearrange some of the tiles if they think they are unevenly distributed (for example, all the three fish tiles are all in the same place, that's a little unfair!).
Each player chooses a penguin colour and takes the appropriate number of penguins of that colour. In a two player game, you need four penguins. In a three player game, you need three penguins. And in a four player game, you need two penguins.
Players place their penguins on the game board, starting with the youngest player and proceeding clockwise. Each player takes a turn placing one penguin on an unoccupied ice floe tile containing only one fish. Continue this until all penguins are in their starting positions.
Run! Or Waddle.
On a turn, each player can move a penguin, and/or collect an ice floe tile.
To move, the player selects one of their penguins on the board, and moves it in a straight line, as far as they'd like. The penguin can move in any one of the six directions of the hexagon tile, but it cannot change direction during the move. It also can't move through tiles occupied by other penguins or pass through empty tile spaces. After moving, a player can then collect the tile that the penguin moved from and add it to their collection. It is then time for the next player's turn.
Play continues in this manner until no penguins have any more legal moves and all penguins have been removed from the game board. A player must move one of their penguins each turn and if they cannot, must remove all of their penguins from the game board and add the ice floes they occupied to their collection.
Fish Count
Once all penguins have been removed from the game board, total up your fish. The player who collected the highest number of slippery fish wins!
Summary
Hey that's my Fish! is a super simple and quick fire game. It's perfect to play with kids or for people who just prefer a game with a little sprinkle of strategy, but nothing to overload them. The box is relatively small and light, meaning it can be packed to go.
The component pieces aren't the best, the tiles are a nice quality but the penguins are plastic and feel a little cheap. I think I'd prefer them to be wooden pieces but that's just a personal preference. Set up can be a little fiddly and be ready for tiles to move regularly when others are collected - this may hurt your brain a little if you like pieces to be very neat on the table (like me!).
I'm a very competitive person, and this game really brings that out of me. There's no stopping you once you collect your first ice floe tile, move out of the way fellow penguins!
