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Cats have a pretty good life. They sleep all day, get fed whenever they feel like it, and somehow still find reasons to complain. But in Cucumber Catastrophe, their peaceful existence is interrupted by something far more terrifying than a vacuum cleaner: cucumbers.
If you’ve ever seen those videos of cats launching themselves into the air after spotting a cucumber behind them, you’ll already understand the theme. That’s basically the entire game. Players try to avoid collecting cucumbers while navigating a trick-taking system where the rules of a trick can suddenly change when somebody can’t play the card they’d like to.
It’s a silly idea, and that’s part of the appeal. The theme immediately gets people talking and usually gets a smile before the first card is even played. Once the cards hit the table, though, it quickly becomes a game about making the least bad decision available and hoping somebody else ends up carrying home the vegetables.
👥 3-6 players, ages 8+
⌛ Playing time: 20 minutes
📝 Designer: Michael Feldkötter
🎨 Artwork: Erika de Giglio
🏢 Publisher: DV Games (review copy provided)
Gameplay Overview
Cucumber Catastrophe is a trick-taking game for 3 to 6 players. The deck contains cards numbered from 1 to 60, and over four hands players try to finish with the fewest cucumbers. That’s the first thing to wrap your head around. In most trick-taking games, winning tricks is good. Here, winning tricks can be exactly what you don’t want.
Each trick starts with a lead card. The second card played then determines how the rest of the trick works. If it’s higher than the lead card, the highest card wins the trick. If it’s lower, the lowest card wins instead. That simple decision gives the second player a surprising amount of influence and immediately changes how players look at their hand.
Once the condition has been established, players must continue playing cards that fit the current rule. In a high-card trick, cards must be higher than the lead card. In a low-card trick, they must be lower. If a player can’t do that, they may still play a card, but doing so flips the rule. Suddenly the trick works the other way around and the remaining players can play whatever they like.
That means no trick ever feels completely settled. A card that looked perfectly safe a few seconds ago can suddenly become a problem, and a trick you thought somebody else was collecting can unexpectedly come back your way.
The cards worth five cucumbers deserve special attention. There are only six of them, but they quickly become some of the most important cards in the game. Because they can’t normally be used to start a trick, players often end up carrying them around longer than they’d like, waiting for an opportunity to get rid of them without paying the price themselves.
The game also includes a couple of variants. The Surprise Cucumber variant reveals the lead card from the deck before players add cards from their hands, changing how each trick develops. There’s also an alternative scoring variant that rewards players who collect enough five-cucumber cards. It’s one of those variants that makes you look at terrible cards and briefly wonder if maybe they’re not so terrible after all.
Artwork, Components, and Visual Design
There’s not a lot in the box, but there doesn’t need to be. You get a deck of cards, a trick marker, and a scorepad. Setup is quick, and within a minute or two you’re already playing.
The artwork by Erika de Giglio is probably the reason the cucumber joke keeps working long after the rules explanation is over. The illustrations fully embrace the ridiculous premise and fill the deck with startled cats, confused cats, worried cats, and cats that seem to be questioning every decision they’ve ever made.
The cards themselves are easy to read, which is exactly what a game like this needs. The numbers are large, the cucumber values are easy to spot, and important information stands out immediately. That’s especially important because players are constantly comparing values and scanning tricks to see what’s happening.
The five-cucumber cards are particularly effective from a visual perspective. Their bright colours make them instantly recognisable, and before long everyone at the table starts reacting to them the moment they appear. They have the same energy as receiving a parking ticket. Nothing catastrophic has happened yet, but you know your day just got worse.
There’s also a good amount of variety in the artwork. Even though the game is essentially a deck of numbered cards, the illustrations help create personality throughout the experience. Combined with the simple trick marker and colourful presentation, the game has a cheerful table presence without needing fancy components or production gimmicks.
Nothing in the box feels wasted. The artwork supports the joke, the cards are easy to read, and that’s really all this game needs.
Our Experience
During our games, people regularly thought a trick was heading one way, only for somebody to break the rule and send it in a completely different direction. Those moments got some of the biggest reactions around our table because they often happened just when players thought they had a decent idea of who was taking the trick.
The five-cucumber cards also created some of the funniest situations. Players would hold onto them for several rounds, waiting for the perfect opportunity to get rid of them. Sometimes that worked. Other times someone spent half the hand trying to avoid one specific card, only to collect a pile of cucumbers somewhere else instead. We had several moments where players celebrated getting rid of a dangerous card, only to regret it a turn later.
After a few rounds, people stopped focusing only on their own hand and started paying attention to who was trying to get rid of a dangerous card. Once everyone realised a trick could suddenly swing in another direction, every card started attracting more attention. You could almost see people changing their minds halfway through a round as they tried to work out who was likely to end up with the trick.
Player count made a noticeable difference. With more players, there were simply more opportunities for things to go wrong in unexpected ways. At three players the game still worked perfectly well, but it felt a little more controlled. We found ourselves preferring the Surprise Cucumber variant at lower player counts because it brought back some of the uncertainty that appeared naturally with larger groups.
Our Thoughts
Avoiding tricks isn’t a new idea, but the game keeps asking whether you really want the trick sitting in front of you. Sometimes taking it is the right decision. Sometimes avoiding it is. The fact that the answer keeps changing from trick to trick is what gives the game its identity.
The second player has much more influence than I expected. In many trick-taking games, most attention naturally goes to the lead card. Here, I often found myself paying more attention to the second card because that was the moment where the shape of the trick started to emerge. It’s a small rule, but it gives players an interesting decision right at the beginning of every round and helps the game feel different from more traditional trick-taking games.
The game also feels more tactical than strategic. I rarely felt like I was building a long-term plan from the moment cards were dealt. Most decisions came down to reacting to the current situation, reading what might happen next, and deciding which option was likely to cause the fewest problems later. One thing the game does well is make card values feel less obvious than they first appear. High cards aren’t automatically good and low cards aren’t automatically bad. Whether a card is useful depends entirely on what’s happening in the current trick. That approach fits the game well, especially given its short playing time.
The lack of suits changes the feel of the game quite a bit. On the one hand, it makes the game very easy to teach and keeps things moving. On the other hand, it removes some of the card-tracking and hand-management that dedicated trick-taking players often enjoy. I can see experienced trick-taking fans wishing there was a little more to get their teeth into after repeated plays.
That said, there is still room to improve as you become more familiar with the game. Players will gradually get better at judging when a trick is becoming dangerous, when it’s worth accepting a small penalty, and when it’s time to stop worrying about a particular card and move on. Even after several plays, though, I never felt the urge to start treating it like a puzzle I needed to solve.
The unpredictability is probably the area where opinions will differ most. Some people will enjoy watching carefully laid plans fall apart. Others may occasionally wish they had a little more control over the outcome. In our plays, the game generally stayed on the right side of that line, but I can imagine reactions varying quite a bit from group to group.
The light-hearted presentation helps here. The artwork, theme, and general tone make even frustrating moments easier to laugh off. It’s difficult to stay annoyed for long when the thing causing your problems is a cartoon cucumber.
This isn’t the game I’d reach for when I’m in the mood for a long evening of card play. I’d be more likely to bring it out between bigger games or when introducing people to trick-taking games. The simplicity is part of the appeal, and the game never feels like it’s trying to be anything other than a light card game built around a fun idea.
It delivered more laughs, more groans, and more suspicious vegetables than we expected. That’s exactly what I hoped for from a game about cats and cucumbers.
📝 We received a review copy of Cucumber Catastrophe from DV Games.
