Despite the lunar calendar saying otherwise, it would appear to be the year of the Dog Man, with this being the second (of three) Dog Man board games that we’ll have reviewed so far this year. Unlike Dog Man Flip-o-Rama there’s a little bit of strategy in the map-crawling Dog Man Attack of the Fleas.
Dog Man Attack of the Fleas is a simple, map crawling co-operative board game where players take on the role of the Supa Buddies as they attempt to stop FLEAS (Fuzzy Little Evil Animal Squad) and their Robo-Brontosaurus from terrorising town. They do this through gathering items that are hidden around town, and then shrinking the Brontosaurus down to a tiny size.
This means that there’s actually a degree of communication and strategy required to play, especially as the Robo-Brontosaurus only needs to reach the finish line (which it does by zig-zagging across town) in order to win.
Set up is as simple as assembling the board, slotting the (three pieces in a box) Robo-Brontosaurus together, picking and placing characters and shuffling and laying (face-down) the item tokens in stacks of two. Finally, there’s a spinner, which arguably could have been a dice, to be assembled ahead of play.
Players then take turns spinning the spinner and moving that many slots through town, using either the red of the yellow path and collecting a token — if there is one — from the tile they finish on. After that the Robo-Brontosaurus goes, and slides along the red path. As I said earlier, play focuses on shrinking down the villain and to do that you need to use Shrink Ray on it three times. That said, you do need to be on the same tile as it in order to use it, and that’s where careful planning as well as tools like the Chopper come in, as they can move you around the board.
There’s also invisible spray, which lets you move up to double your spin, and a token that causes the villains to move back tiles. Ultimately, the Robo-Brontosaurus has to move 14 tiles in order to win, meaning unlucky players could lose in as little as five rounds, however between the items and the 1-3 spinner, it’s likely to be a longer game.
Dog Man Attack of the Fleas feels incredibly well-balanced, which isn’t something I often say about children’s board games. In addition to that, I really like how they’ve printed the instructions on the inside of the box rather than having it as a separate booklet, it clearly forces the designers to think about describing the rules concisely, but it also means there’s not a leaflet to lose. Finally, as all good things come in threes, I think that the physical, assembled Robo-Brontosaurus is a great, tactile way of showing off player progress.
Dog Man Attack of the Fleas is available now from Amazon.
