Tamagotchi Collections Review

The fun of caring for a virtual Tamagotchi pet is now analog in the Tamagotchi Collections board game. Two to four players ages 8 and up roll dice to feed, play, and care for the Tamagotchi. 

Everybody starts with two Egg cards, but there’s space for four on each player’s dashboard. The dashboard also helps players keep track of their pets’ happiness levels with a Happy token for each one. In the center of the playing space, you’ll lay out the three Shop tokens, with one Playdate card and two Shop cards next to each token.

There are six Attention dice, but on your turn, you’ll only roll one die for each hatched Tamagotchi that you own. So if you have two Tamagotchi, you’ll roll two dice. If a symbol on any of the Attention dice matches the symbol on a hatched Tamagotchi card, it poops. Move your poop tracker up by one for each Tamagotchi that pooped. Be careful because if the poop tracker gets to seven, the Tamagotchi get sick. You’ll need to use a Care card to clean up the poop. 

If there is a Shop card that you want and one of your Attention dice matches the Shop token symbol in that row, you can discard the die in order to pick up the card you want. Items in the shop will be Care cards that have different actions a Tamagotchi can take on a player’s turn, Food cards that up the Tamagotchi’s happy value, Item cards that can be played with when the Tamagotchi in that room matches one of the rolled symbols, and Playdate cards that give the player a small reward when a Playdate token is taken. If the last Playdate token is taken from a card, a Minigame happens. Each player who has a Playdate token from that row gets to play. You use the Minigames deck of cards to play one of four games: Jumping Jacks, Mimic, Thread the Needle, and Guess the Number. 

You can also exchange a die for an Egg card if you have an open room. The egg can only hatch when a symbol on the Attention dice matches the symbol on the Egg card. When a Tamagotchi reaches four Happy Points, they Grow Up. Place that Tamagotchi off to the side for extra points, and reset the room’s Happy Meter to zero so that another Egg card can move in.

If the Shop deck or Playdate deck cannot be fully refilled or the Egg deck is empty, the game ends. Players tally up points from how many Tamagotchi are on their Dashboard, how many are Grown Up, and any Food tokens on Grown Up Tamagotchi. The player with the most points wins. 

If you want a shorter game, discard 15 Shop cards and two Playdate cards. 

The game comes with 62 Total Shop cards, 14 Item cards, 30 Care cards, 18 Food cards, 10 Playdate cards, 20 Minigame cards, six Attention dice, 30 Egg cards, four Reference cards, 20 Happy tokens, four Dashboards, 70 Food tokens, 30 Playdate tokens, three Shop tokens, and four Poop tokens.