Do the little gamers in your family like to invent wild and wonderful animals? Head of a bear with the legs of a lizard = a blizzard. That type of thing? If so, The Muddles card game could be a great one for family game night!

How To Play

Setting up the game is simple – lay out one of each muddle card and then shuffle the remainder and add 8 more. Some muddles will be duplicated and others not depending on the draw. Pop the rest back and then give each player 3 animal cards face-up from the deck and place the remainder of the deck in the centre of the table.

If you can make a muddle on your turn by matching two of your cards to the required mix (e.g. a jellyfish and a cow), claim it and add it to your winning pile, discarding the two cards you used. Then draw back up to three animal cards.

If you can’t make a muddle, you must discard two cards and draw two new ones from the animal deck face up. If you can now muddle, great! Next turn you’ll be able to discard the matching cards and claim that marvellous muddle (if it’s still there to claim!! But if you still can’t muddle and you have two matching animals, you discard the unique one and draw a new card. If you end up with 3 matching animals…Jackpotting Jellyfish! Next turn you’ll be able to claim any muddle you want!

Sneakily, if you have the two cards needed to make a muddle, instead of dipping into the pool, you can steal one from another player (so long as the one you want is sitting atop their winning pile!).

If the animal card deck runs out during play, the discard pile simply gets re-shuffled. The game ends when the last muddle has been claimed and then it’s point totalling time!

Final Thoughts

The Muddles is a super cute, fun twist on mixing and matching that’s spot on for the recommended age of 6+. Colourful chimera abound the table, and it’s definitely a struggle not to fall for the charms of the wow and the wee!

But with cards worth different number of points and a dash of take-that stealing action, it’s also not just a little person’s game. Older kids, parents, and others will have fun playng this too. There are also some variants that can ratchet the game up a notch further. And whilst it can feel like you’re in a bit of a loop when you have two matching cards and the third one isn’t bringing together any muddles, suddenly getting that third cow is a yessssss! moment. You won’t be able to help yourself. You’ll be sitting there in front of your cards, and you will be eyes-wide-waiting-to-flip. And you will enjoy that sweet jackpot moment! It’s intense!! Haha Okay so it’s not going to be the most tense game you play, but it’s still cute and colourful and fun. And that’s what gaming with our next gen should be about!

There’s also a really sweet storybook included in the box that tells the tale of Wow’s birthday. And Big Potato have maximised the use of environmentally materials including the use of stickers made from plants! How I don’t know, but it’s very cool indeed! And we always have a chat around the table about environmental issues when we see the references to plastic free packaging in Big Potato games.

Overall The Muddles is a really sweet, fun, budget friendly little card game that our almost 8 year old really enjoys playing. And honestly we really enjoyed playing it with him too! It doesn’t take long, and it’s a great one to help our son match patterns and learn good sportsmanship. When someone takes his Frug, he can’t get the grumps! Trouble is, now he wants us to have belllyfishes on the farm…….and whilst we have bees and fish, I’m not sure my genetic engineering skills are going to be up to par! Haha

Editors note: This post was Updated on 04/07/2024 to improve the information available.