A Dog’s Life

I am reviewing this edition pictured. There is an earlier edition from 2001 with most of the same dogs but there were a couple of different dogs and the art work was not(in my opinion) as nice. Basically, you ,as a dog, wander the streets marking your territory, begging for food, hiding from the dog catcher, drinking from a public fountain, burying bones, delivering newspapers, escaping from the pound and occasionally fighting with other dogs. Each dog has it’s own deck of cards showing success or failure at the six different actions a dog can take and how many action points it has to take actions on a turn. Smaller dogs are generally more likely to succeed at begging but more likely will lose a fight. When you spend action to do an activity such as beg you turn over the top card of the dog’s personal card deck and look up the results. If you are just walking or drinking water or marking your territory,done by leaving a pee marker on a lampost by the way, that costs action points but not a card. The game play is fun and innovative and has a light strategy to it as to what to choose and when to choose it, for instance you cannot beg at the same location twice in a row on the same turn, but you can beg at location A, then go to B and beg and then return to A to beg again if you have enough action points,however, it is also legal to arrive at A and beg and end your turn and then beg at A again on your next turn. There is supposed to be a kickstarter version of this game with some rules changes and new dogs coming out in September that I will be watching for.