Second Look—Poop: The Game

Arriving on my doorstep in a brown paper bag, Poop the Game was gently wrapped in a bit of toilet paper inside. This is how the game is shipped, and it’s just part of the experience of the little card game by Blaise Sewell. Along with the paper bag came a brief history of the game via email.

I’d love to share some of the POOP: The Game history! Back in 2013, my son Emery, who was 6 at the time, was my playmate and inspired so many of my games. My newborn daughter, Sienna, and I would walk him home from school and he’d create new games for us every day to turn our walk into an adventure. Somewhere along the way we got fixated on making a game about poop. I put together some simple designs for it so we could print out the cards and start testing concepts. We played until it was perfect and met the demands we set out for in a poop game: it had toilet clogging, it had flushing, it was silly but not gross, and anyone can play it.

I wrote an ESSAY around that time to describe my process of generating concepts for games. Everything fell into place for POOP very quickly, which is always a good sign, so I decided I would release it asap. The KICKSTARTER rocked out and then I’ve been taking it on the road ever since.

Poop plays very simply. Players play numbered cards from their hand to the current toilet. The goal is to get rid of your entire hand without clogging the toilet by forcing the pile to add up to, or over, the number on the toilet. Do that and you take the pile and draw a new toilet. Of course that’s not all. You can flush the toilet by getting 3 of the same color cards in a row. This gets rid of the current stack, and forces all other players to draw a card. There’s also wild cards, reverse cards, and skip cards. You need to manage your hand to make sure you’re the first one who finishes pooping.

It’s a kids’ game, and my kids love it. There’s nothing like poop jokes to get the kids in an uncontrollable state. Add in the noises and gestures the wild cards make you perform and you’ve got a winning combination for the younger ones. Poop also claims to be a drinking game for adults, but I haven’t had a chance to give it a shot with a few shots yet.

Now I should mention that the Poop in a Bag I recived on my front door isn’t actually out yet. Blaise is currently running a Kickstarter project to fund the paper bag shipping, along with 2 new versions of the game: Caca El Juego and the Public Restroom Edition. Multiple editions of Poop can be combined to add more players and zany action.

It’s not a deep game, or very meaty, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun with younger kids. Poop and the Party Pooper Edition have a permanent living spot in my bag now, as we take it pretty much anywhere we go so the kids can play.

A copy of Poop and the Party Pooper Edition were provided free for review by Feels Right Design.