Wouter & Ymke 
When I first heard about a game where players compete to collect pigeons on a park bench, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. It’s not exactly a theme you see every day. Pigeons aren’t usually the stars of board games. They’re more the birds that stare at you while you’re eating fries and make you slightly uncomfortable.
And yet, that’s exactly the idea behind Oh My Pigeons! In this quick party game, everyone is trying to attract pigeons to their own bench while making sure the other players don’t get too comfortable. You’ll collect birds, steal birds, lose birds, and occasionally watch your carefully built flock disappear in a matter of seconds. Things can change very quickly, and not always in your favour.
What stood out straight away wasn’t the strategy, because there honestly isn’t a huge amount of it. Instead, it was how completely the game commits to the idea of players fighting over pigeons. The artwork, the miniatures, the card names, even the fact that the rulebook refers to flicking pigeon poo… everything revolves around that joke.
👥 2-5 players, ages 8+
⌛ Playing time: 3-15 minutes
📝 Designer: Shanon Lyon
🎨 Artwork: Alena Istif
🏢 Publisher: Ravensburger (review copy provided)
Gameplay Overview
The setup is about as simple as it gets. Each player receives a bench with three pigeons already sitting on it, while the remaining pigeons are placed in the middle of the table to form the flock. Everyone starts with three cards in hand and the rest of the deck becomes the draw pile.
On your turn, you play a card and carry out its effect. Once you’re done, you draw back up to three cards and play moves to the next player. Most cards either help you gain pigeons, take them from someone else, or make life slightly miserable for your opponents. It’s not exactly a peaceful afternoon in the park.
The card everyone immediately notices is the oh my pigeons! card. When you play it, you roll the custom die and see what happens. Sometimes you’ll collect pigeons from the flock. Sometimes you’ll steal them from other players. And sometimes you’ll place the die near your bench and flick it towards someone else’s pigeons.
Yes, really.
Any pigeons that get knocked off the bench go back into the flock. According to the game you’re technically flicking pigeon poo rather than a die. I wish I was making that up.
If you’re stealing pigeons and your opponents don’t have enough available, any remaining pigeons are taken from the flock instead. There’s also the famous non card, which can be played almost anytime, even when it isn’t your turn. It lets you cancel another player’s action. Maybe they were about to steal your pigeons. Maybe they were about to win. Maybe you’re just feeling petty. All are perfectly valid reasons.
The game continues with pigeons constantly moving between benches and the flock until someone fills every space on their bench. The moment that happens, the game ends immediately. If nobody manages to fill their bench before the deck runs out, everyone gets one final turn and the player with the most pigeons wins.
Artwork, Components, and Visual Design
The first thing people usually notice when opening the box isn’t the cards or the rules. It’s the pigeons.
There are 36 little plastic pigeon miniatures in the box, and they’re surprisingly charming. They have oversized eyes, rounded shapes, and the kind of expression that makes them look permanently confused. They look a bit like me before my morning coffee.
The pigeons do a lot of the work when it comes to getting people interested. Before we had even explained the rules, people were already picking them up, lining them up on the benches, and asking what on earth the game was about. If these had been cardboard tokens instead, I don’t think the game would have made the same first impression.
The bench boards are nice as well. They look like small park benches viewed from above and clearly show how close each player is to victory. The artwork follows the same playful style throughout. The pigeons appear in all sorts of ridiculous situations. Some are athletes, some are dressed up, and some simply look like they’ve made a series of poor life decisions. The artwork constantly reminds you that this is a game about pigeons doing absurd things, which helps sell some of the chaos during play.
Our Experience
We had sessions with players who rarely play board games and sessions with people who play every week. In both cases, it didn’t take long before everyone stopped focusing on the rules and started focusing on each other. Before long, the discussion wasn’t about cards anymore. It was about who was stealing pigeons, who was secretly getting close to winning, and who absolutely couldn’t be trusted.
What surprised us was how involved everyone stayed throughout the game. Because pigeons constantly move around the table and because the non card can appear at almost any moment, there was usually something worth paying attention to. Nobody wanted to miss the chance to stop a winning move or watch somebody lose a few pigeons at exactly the wrong moment.
The oh my pigeons! card was responsible for most of the stories that came out of our plays. Nobody ever felt completely safe once the die came out. More than once we saw a player feeling quite comfortable about their position only to see things change immediately afterwards. The flicking action sounds ridiculous when you explain it, but in practice it became one of those things people remembered afterwards. We even had a few completely missed flicks followed by immediate attempts to blame the die instead of the person holding it. Funny how that works.
There was also far more table talk than we expected. Players constantly tried to redirect attention away from themselves, pointed fingers at whoever was doing well, and made promises that were conveniently forgotten a turn later. Because every bench is visible, nobody stays under the radar for very long. The moment somebody starts getting close to victory, the entire table suddenly develops a strong interest in their pigeons.
The game felt strongest with four or five players. That’s where the table felt busiest and where the constant stealing, blocking, and pigeon movement created the most entertaining situations. With fewer players the game still worked perfectly fine, but some of that atmosphere disappeared. By the end of most sessions people weren’t talking about who won. They were talking about the pigeon they lost at exactly the wrong moment, the interruption they didn’t see coming, or the lucky flick that somehow worked despite looking impossible.
Our Thoughts
The same thing that makes Oh My Pigeons! easy to enjoy is also the thing that limits how much depth you’ll find in it. Most turns didn’t leave us staring at our hand for very long. The decisions are usually straightforward, and after a few plays you start to recognise the same patterns appearing again and again. You’re collecting pigeons, stopping other players from collecting pigeons, and occasionally hoping nobody notices how close you are to winning.
If I’m remembering Oh My Pigeons! six months from now, it won’t be because of the individual card effects. It’ll be because of the pigeon miniatures, the absurd artwork, and the fact that somebody at the table was desperately trying to defend ownership of a tiny plastic bird. The theme carries a lot of the experience. Without it, the gameplay underneath would feel much more ordinary.
The short playtime also helps a lot. You can build a strong position and lose it surprisingly quickly, and that’s much easier to accept in a fifteen-minute game than it would be in a forty-five-minute one. A longer version of this game would probably test my patience. At its current length, it usually ends around the point where it should.
The one thing I’m less certain about is how often I’d want to bring it back to the table. Future games will create different stories, but they don’t necessarily reveal new approaches or hidden layers. I can easily imagine families and casual groups getting plenty of use out of it, while more dedicated hobby gamers may eventually feel they’ve seen most of what the game can do.
The flicking mechanism will probably divide opinions as well. Some players will enjoy the physical interaction because it gives the game a bit more character. Others would probably prefer the outcome to be decided entirely by cards. We also had a few games where somebody who wasn’t going to win still had quite a lot of influence over who eventually did. Neither issue ruined the experience for us, but both are worth keeping in mind depending on your group.
People will get the most out of Oh My Pigeons! if they approach it as a social game rather than a strategy game. It’s the sort of game I can see bringing out between heavier titles, at family gatherings, or when there’s a mixed group around the table and nobody wants a lengthy rules explanation.
Will it become a favourite for people who want lots of strategic depth? Probably not. But for families, casual players, children, and groups that enjoy a bit of harmless chaos, there’s quite a lot to like here. The game leans fully into its ridiculous theme, the production is charming, and the short playtime keeps the experience moving.
Sometimes it’s enough to spend fifteen minutes arguing over tiny plastic pigeons. That’s not a bad way to spend an evening.
📝 We received a review copy of Oh My Pigeons! from Ravensburger.
