Cloaked Cats Card Game Review

0:00 this episode of brains on games will talk about a deduction game with cats welcome to brains on games i'm dr brian mcdonald in this episode we are going to talk about a deduction game that works for younger kids it's a game that was sent to me a while back by the folks over at habba and i love habba games honestly one of the reasons why it takes me a while to to make videos about habbas games is that a lot of them are at my office i recommend these games to parents all the time so i like to have them handy so that i can show them off but this is a game that was sent to me some time ago by the folks over at habit it's a game called cloaked cats this is a game for kids age seven and up you can play it with two to four players and a game takes only about 20 minutes let's take a deeper look at cloaked cats cloak cats is a very light deduction game i should say that really it's family weight i played it with my 18 year old and we had a good time figuring out one another's cats but the theme is it's about cats at a masquerade ball and each player is trying to guess the features the appearance of the other players cats before their own cards are guessed you can see it's a masquerade ball there's masks on the back of the cards there's mask each player is going to have masked tokens in their color and at the beginning of the game you're going to shuffle up these invitations to the

1:30 party and you shuffle these up really they're all the same except for one thing about them one of them is going to have a little wax seal on the bottom that's going to indicate the first player and you give that first player whoever got that invitation the first player token that makes it easy to see to make sure that everyone has the same number of turns as you come to the end of the game the other thing about these invitations that's really important that you can see here like i said you're trying to guess the features of the other players cats the invitation shows you all the possibilities which is very important it's helpful especially for kids to keep track of these things and and the invitation lets you do that so you've got cats that can be in different poses they can be all kinds of different colors there's really lots of variety in color they can be striped or spotted and they can have different accessories uh on on their card so you'll see that when i show you the pictures of these different cats these numbers on the side of the invitation you might be able to see they're they're not referring to points they're referring to how many of those cards are in the feature deck and this is the feature deck let's see i've got it right over here the feature deck has these little tiny cards and you can see them here so these are going to be shuffled up and each player is going to get three of them and it shows you you might possibly have a certain pose or stripes or spots or a particular color or some accessory that you're going to

3:00 be trying to prevent the other players from guessing and you've got these little fans now when i first opened up the box and punched these out i thought well this is kind of a gimmick maybe for those smaller kids with smaller hands to hold their cards but this is really an important feature of the game because you're not going to hold on to these feature cards you're going to be holding like the cards that are in your hand are these ones i'm holding them upside down but they're these larger ones so you're going to be hanging on to these ones and you're going to be putting these in front of you just for reference so if i get dealt out my hand of three cards i'm going to put them into this fan like this i'll show you on the camera here so they all just slide in to make them super easy to see you don't have to have them all memorized so you lay them out just like this and they're going to be standing up in front of you so the other players can't see them now you may have noticed that you might get this well different versions of the same feature twice so this one has two different positions so you might have a cat who's sitting here like a boss or a cat who's prancing and your cat can do both of those things cats can have multiple colors so you might have two different colors you might have stripes and spots it's starting to get a little unusual there maybe but the rulebook says well you know some of these combinations might be rare but not impossible for a cat to be lazy and playful maybe at the same time or at

4:31 different times over their life so you're going to have these three things you're trying to keep the other players from guessing them the other things that you'll get are these little mask tokens you're going to use these throughout the game and they also will count allow you to count up points at the end of the game once all the players have their features in their fan and they're all set up in that way they're going to draw a hand of three cards you're always going to have three cards and you definitely want to make sure you have a lot of space on the table when you're playing this game especially with younger kids because if you're having trouble guessing there's going to be more and more cats that fill up that table space which is called the dance floor so all the cats are coming out on the dance floor and that's what you're using to guess the other player's cat's features now here is an example on your turn you're going to do well up to four things there's one step that's optional but you're going to do four things you're going to play a card from your hand so you've only got three cards to choose from i'm going to play one of these cards so i've got a black cat who's got stripes who's kind of prancing like this now it does match one of the features here in my fan the next thing that's going to happen is that all of the players are going to reveal whether a feature matches the features that are in their fans so in this case if i'm the purple player because i've got this purple fan i have to put a mask on here to show that one of the features matches one or more features now there could be multiple things i could have a blue cat that's prancing like this i'm still only

6:02 going to put one fan on here and that makes it harder for the other players to guess maybe the yellow player has a striped cat so they're going to put a mask on there as well the next thing that happens is optional so first you play a card next everybody reveals whether the card matches the features that they have in their fan the third optional step is that you can take a guess once the dance floor starts to fill up you can start to guess what cards are in the other players fans according to where they're placing and not placing those masks the final thing that's going to happen is that you're going to refill your hand and then the next player gets to play a turn it is sort of neat because you you get everybody involved in each player's turn because you're all going to be looking at the card they played and deciding does that match one of the features that i have or not and then they all place their little masks on there it is tricky because you do you've only got the choice of those three cards and you do want to play a card that's not going to give too much away about the cards that you have so this was maybe not a great play for me for my first card to have to put a mask down right away i maybe would have wanted to put this card down and then i would put no masks on it and at the beginning that it gives you a bit of information my cat's not white my cat doesn't have spots my cat isn't jumping in the air like this and you can see that none of those things match so i would not put a mask

7:33 on this one and as the grid of cards fill fills up you're going to see that there are some let's see i would need to put a purple one on here and i don't have a top hat or anything like that there's no blue cats and then the other players might be playing some too let's see if i can find a blue one each turn a player is going to play a card you're going to put your mask down on there to show that you have a feature or not a player might guess now if a player guesses right what happens you take the card out of your fan and you reveal it to all the players now you still have to place a mask down on these prancing cats so if another one comes up like this i would still have to put a mask on it even though this is revealed it does make it confusing because you don't know is is is the purple player identifying some new detail like does he have a ball of yarn or is he just referring to the fact that his cat is in the same pose so it remains complicated if you do guess an opponent's card correctly like i said they reveal their card they have to give you one of their masks and that's how you keep track of points at the end it's much easier to keep track of points when it's a two-player game but once you get three or four people playing who's getting the right guesses it's important to keep track of that so you get a point at the end of the game for each of these masks that you've collected from the other players now we have a few cards out i'm only identifying my own features here because i didn't draw feature cards for another player but you can see how as this tableau fills out in the middle

9:05 of the table you're getting more and more information about the other players cats that they have the features that they have in their fan and the game is going to end as soon as one player has all of their cards from their fan revealed then you finish the turn you go around the table until everybody's had an equal number of guesses but once one player's cards are revealed the other players that round don't get to play more cards or place more masks that all they can do is take a guess so you might get a chance for one final guess based on the information that's already on the table to try and earn another point before the game ends and then you just count up points you get a point for each of your unrevealed features so if the game ends and i still have one of these cards in here i'm going to get a point you also get a point for each of your correct guesses remember that your correct guesses are going to give you one of these masks now if you guess wrong i didn't even mention this if you guessed wrong if i said if another player said oh i think that your cat maybe is black and my cat isn't black if you if you guess wrong then you have to give the other player one of your masks so you get points for guessing correctly you get points if other players guess your features incorrectly and then you count up points and that's how you're going to win the game now what skills are you working on when you play a game of cloaked cats well this is a game that's so much about

10:37 logical thinking you're using how these masks are placed to deduce what are the features that are being identified and because there are so many different features here to choose from you really have to look at a lot of information you also want to be logical about which cards you play so that you're getting information from the other players but not giving too much away so you may want to play a card that has a feature that's already been revealed from your cards that everyone already knows about because then that's not going to give as much information to the other players one factor when we're talking about that kind of logical thinking logical problem solving is pattern recognition you're looking at the way that those masks are laid out and using that information to figure out well what's what's the pattern here what's trying to be identified you're working with that incomplete information to figure out what rule is being used here to place those masks and the rule for each player is based on those three cards that they have in their fan so if you're working with that incomplete visual information and you're doing that that logical problem solving those are examples of flexible problem solving or fluid reasoning skills and fluid reasoning is a very important ability when we're talking about psychological testing in iq it's a huge factor and and maybe one of the most important uh cognitive factors in terms

12:08 of academic success another skill that's coming into play here is working memory working memory is the white board in your mind is where you keep information so that you can work with it and you definitely are exercising working memory skills when you're looking at all of these masks and the cards that have no mask and you're trying to elim rule in or rule out different features that the other players are identifying by the way they place those things there's a lot of information to juggle and when you're juggling lots of information that is a good example of a working memory exercise so you've got logical thinking fluid reasoning and working memory are all being developed here now of course finally along with working memory there's a real attention factor a concentration factor and attention to detail that's important here so that you don't make mistakes and make incorrect guesses final thoughts about cloak cats well this is a game that is a lot like clue if you've played clue before then you're sort of familiar with these kinds of deduction games so it's a lot like clue but you've got that animal theme the artwork is fun there are lots of different choices that you're making here but all of the information is available to everyone at the same time you might on other players turns be looking at the way that the cards are laid out and trying to figure out your guess before you play your card and and it because it's it's a deduction game that's that's practicing those logical thinking skills this is

13:38 something that i used to love watching my kids do when when they were playing a game or doing some activity just seeing those skills develop i still like to see that i don't mind losing a game to my kids because i love it when they figure out something faster than i did that's fantastic when that happens so as a parent i love watching those skills develop and this is a good way not just to to watch them develop but to allow them to practice those abilities i had a teacher who used to say that there's certain kind of activities that are training you in a habit of mind so that idea of just getting into the habit of paying close attention to details and and being thoughtful about things before you take a guess uh about something that you're unsure about the the components here are fun the artwork is fun it's a game that's quick to play it's in a small box so it's easy to bring anywhere you couldn't really play it outside because it is a game that has cards that would blow away in the wind but it is a game that you can transport easily like i said quick to play quick to learn quick to teach and i love games like that especially for young kids it requires some focus but not so much so that the younger kids are going to be left out so it's just an easy easy game to get into there there's not a single downside to this one other than maybe you need a big table to play it on if you're playing with young kids who are having trouble getting all of those features right so more and more cats are coming out onto that dance

15:08 floor but that's not a downside at all once again this is a great game from haba thanks so much to the folks at habba for sending this game my way and if you have any questions or comments you can leave them in the comment section below the video or you can email me at brian at brainsongames.com brainzonegames.ca is the website that's where future episodes are going the previous ones are up there already brains on games is the twitter handle and the facebook page and the instagram feed so we're all over the place and if you enjoyed this video and you want to be notified of future ones you can head on over to youtube and click that subscribe button thanks for joining me and hopefully i'll see you next time you