Dumb Ways to Die Review

Dumb Ways to Die is a game for 2-5 players ages 12 and up. From the box art it’s pretty…evident what you’re signing up for. The goal of the game is to make sure your beans don’t die. Be the last one with a bean left alive to win the game!

Give each player 3 animated Bean Death Cards face up and 5 playing cards facedown. Roll the die to see how many actions you can take per turn. An action can involve playing a card or drawing a card. There are various types of cards that require card swapping between hands or so on, but the core cards are ‘Accident’ cards and ‘You Died!’ cards. Accident cards can be played against an opponent to kill one of their beans, but they can be countered by an accident card of an appropriate type, in the style of “rock, paper, scissors”. Nature beats Ride, Ride beats Home, and Home beats Nature. If you can play an accident card to counter, your bean is safe…for now. If you draw a You Died! card, then you yourself must have the correct accident card to counter it. A Relax card is wild and saves you from anything…except for the Psycho Attack card, where everyone must roll a 1 to survive or else perish. When you lose a life, flip over a Bean Death Card to see the holographic animated death sequence. These cards, while disturbing, are very well crafted. The last one with a bean alive wins! As mentioned, there are plenty of other cards which affect the flow of play in bold and unexpected ways, which keeps things chaotic. The brand of humor is irreverent, quirky and morbid, so if that’s your thing, we suggest you give this game a try.