Hippo Crates

The Game

This was a game I played at the MASAGA Conference 2024. MASAGA means Malaysia Simulation and Games. It is a community which uses games in learning. Learning can vary from corporate training (which I do) and tertiary education to primary schools and even teaching children with special needs.

In Hippo Crates, everyone starts the game drawing one hippo card. The card you get determines what kind of fruit you like. You only score points for this fruit type. During the course of the game you will collect cards. The only cards which score points for you will be this fruit type. There is one special hippo which is confused. He doesn’t score points for collecting cards. Instead he score points based on cards collected by everyone else which do not match their hippos’ preferences. He scores 1 point per card this way.

This hippo only eats pineapples

The confused hippo

When the game starts, three cards are set up at the center of the table, starting three separate rows. Every round, players each pick one card from their hands and reveal them simultaneously. In order from lowest to highest card, you try to add your card to one of the three rows. If your card is smaller than the smallest card in a row, you may add it to the left of that row. If it is higher than the highest card, then you may add it to the right. If you can’t add your card to any row, that is good news. You claim all the cards in one of the rows and leave your own card there to start a new row.

The game ends when the draw deck runs out.

There will always be three rows of cards, with at least one card in each row.

The Play

There are some similarities to 6 Nimmt / Category 5. One big difference here is you want to take cards, not avoid cards. Playing a lower number probably gives you more control, because if you are lowest, you go first and decide where to place your card. However if your card is very low, likely you can find a spot to play it, and you won't claim anything. The middling cards might be better, because chances are higher that you can't find a slot. You probably want to have a middling card that is just a bit smaller than the other middling cards, so that you will be first to get into the situation of being unable to play your card. After you claim a row, your card will start the new row, and likely the others after you will be able to place their cards in the new row you just created. 

How you play your cards depends on the situation on the table. It also depends on what cards you have in hand. You can plan a little for the next round, e.g. playing a food type you want hoping you can win it next round. There seems to be not a lot of control, especially when there are many players. You only have a hand of three cards, so you don't have many options. With the uncertainty of what cards others might be playing, it seems difficult to deliberately plan to win the food type you want. But perhaps I had this feeling because we were all new to the game and we didn't know how to strategise our plays. The game might become more strategic and less random when the players start working out the tactics. 

Hand size is three, so you can't plan ahead as much as in Category 5, but maybe this is intentional, because you will be less prone to analysis paralysis. 

The game feels a little swingy. The card values range from 1 to 9. If you manage to win the higher cards in your food type, you will likely win. It is already hard to win food types you want, so scoring your high valued cards feels like it's about getting very lucky. 

There is an advanced variant where your hippo type is not known to your opponents. This way, you need to guess your opponents' preferred food types by observing how they play. 

The Thoughts

Hippo Crates is a light family game. There seems to be little control, so it feels a little chaotic. It seems difficult to do any effective planning ahead. Capturing the high cards of your preferred food type will likely determine whether you win. I have a gut feeling that the game can use some more development and fine-tuning, but then I might be completely wrong, since I have only played with fellow beginners and most are non-gamers.