written by David Steffen
Pass the Pigs: Pig Party is an expanded version of the game Pass the Pigs. In case you haven’t played Pass the Pigs (which I’m guessing you haven’t) it is a simple game where you score points based on how the pigs land. For instance, a single pig on its feet is called a “trotter” worth 5 points, up to a pig which is balancing on its snout and ear, a “leaning jowler”. You can keep rolling and building up points until you decide to stop and keep the points or you get a “pig out” (two pigs on their sides one showing a spot and one not showing a spot).
Party Edition works a little differently in that in each turn you are rolling for a particular goal and every player tries to get that goal in turn, and there are expanded rules that involve rolling 8 pigs all at once and scoring based on the number of pigs that match certain patterns.
It’s simple for little kids to understand which does make it good for families with young kids!
Audience
Suitable for very young kids (with older people to help with the scorekeeping if they want to play for real).
Challenge
Mostly based on random chance, though with a bit of chance because of whether you choose to keep rolling or not–each roll has a chance of accumulating more points or completely blanking out your turn.
Session Time
Quick game–if you played a full round you’d probably be done in 10 minutes.
Replayability
Not a lot of novelty, likely to wear out pretty quickly except for pretty young kids.
Originality
Although of course it’s a spinoff, odds are most have never played a game where you roll pigs for points, so certainly gets some points for novelty..
Overall
Reasonably compact, easy to learn and play for young children. Likely to wear out its novelty for older players before too long but would be a good way to pass some time with little ones.
