Ahh, what a pretty cactus...
| Ouch! (2022) | |||||
| Designer(s) | Romain Caterdjian, Théo Rivière | Artist(s) | Fran Collado | Publisher |
Devir Games |
 |
2-5 |  |
5+ |  |
10-15m |
OUCH! Why do I always touch the spiky part of the cacti!? Do you feel lucky and believe you can carefully pick up cacti without hurting yourself? Maybe you will get lucky and find cacti with a lot of pretty flowers or even a cute critter or two.
Components
The game comes in very compact box that holds the cards and rules perfectly. This size box is a standard for their mini-series. The game includes the following components:
- 44 Cards: 36 of the cards contain only cacti while the remaining 8 also contain small animals that have some minor rules of their own. The cacti have four different colored flowers as well that could be worth collecting a variety of for bonus points at the end of the game; the colors include: Red, Blue, Purple, and Yellow.
- Five Rulebooks in different languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Catalan/Valencien. The rules are very simple and fully covered in 3 pages.
The components are pretty good quality. They aren’t your cheap card stock but also not your top tier; they are perfectly acceptable for this type of game. I don’t imagine these cards will get damaged too easily if used as intended.
Gameplay
Setup 
Setup is extremely easy. Shuffle all of the cards together ensuring only the cactus side is faceup. Place 6 cards in the center of the table with their cactus side up keeping the other side a secret. Pick a start player and begin.
Player Turn
On their turn, the active player will select one faceup card that they will flip over; they will announce which of the four sides of the card they will be picking up by. If the side has a cactus on it, they get pricked and get no points. If they aren’t pricked, they will keep the card; there are 8 cards with animals that have additional rules.
The cards with special rules are as follows:
- Red flower cards: If pricked, you lose that card and one of your previously collected cards (if any).
- Snake: If you collected it without getting pricked, if the next player is pricked; you collect that card instead of it being sent to the discard pile.
- Fennec: If you collected it without getting pricked, you may take an additional turn immediately; however, if you get pricked by that card, you lose both cards.
After a player and reveal and resolved their card, play continues to the next player.
The game continues until one player has collected 8 cards.
End Game
Scoring is pretty simple:
- 1 point per flower on the collected cards
- 4 points for each unique set of flowers (1 red, 1 blue, 1 purple, and 1 yellow)
- 5 points if you have the most red flowers. In the event of a tie, all tied players get +5 points.
Whoever has the most points wins; ties share the victory.
Final Thoughts
I really like this game! It is so simple to teach in 30 seconds with only the three special rules requiring a little extra explanation. This can easily be enjoyed by people of nearly all ages. This being yet another one of the mini games in the series, I can highly recommend it based on the enjoyment factor and the price ($10).