Fetz the Hungry Dragon

Jon said I’d probably like Fetz, because it’s a lying game. It is true that many of the games I design have some form of deceit. I like that kind of psychological play. I like having a bit of gaming the people in games and not only problem solving. Fetz is a game from Thailand and it is the best party game winner of the 2026 Thailand Board Game Awards. 

The game box unfolds to become the game board

In Fetz you are all feeding the dragon. Whatever you manage to feed will be worth points. When you feed, you declare what it is without showing anyone. Others can challenge you if they don’t think you are feeding the dragon what you say. If you are caught lying, the food is discarded, instead of being fed to the dragon. Successfully feeding the dragon means you get to keep the cards you play for game end scoring. If no one has challenged you, you keep those cards face down. If someone has challenged you and you have been truthful, the cards would have been revealed and they stay face up in front of you.

A big part of the game is stock price manipulation. There are five kinds of animals you can feed to the dragon. Each animal fed will be worth between 1 to 5 points at game end. During the game you keep track of how many of each type has been fed. The animal type that has been fed the most will be worth the fewest points. Tracking this is based on what have been successfully fed, and that includes sets of cards which players declare are a certain animal type but are not inspected by others. If a certain animal type looks like it will be worth a lot of points, you can attempt to feed several at one go, and declare it as another type. If no one inspects, you will have gotten away with scoring many points without devaluing that animal type. If you are always truthful about what you feed, while you do score points, you may also be devaluing the animal you are feeding. This is why there is incentive to lie. 

The game board is mainly for keeping track of how many times each animal has been fed to Fetz. There is also a reference sheet to tell you how many cards to use for different player counts. 

There is one animal type you can’t feed the dragon - snakes. Snakes are an interesting part of the game. Each is -2 points. They are considered jokers. If you declare three sheep and someone challenges you, only to find two sheep and one snake, you are considered to be truthful. You get to feed the two sheep, which means you keep them before you. The challenger takes the snake. If you use a snake but no one challenges you, you will take the snake yourself, and you must reveal the snake. When you play a snake, you hope someone will challenge you and take the snake away. Else you will be taking it. 

The game is played until the deck runs out. You can roughly keep count of the cards. Snakes are always revealed so you know exactly how many are left. For the other animal types, since unchallenged cards are kept face-down, you don't know for sure. 

I found the game to be mostly about stock price manipulation and only partly about lying. I wonder whether it was because other players were aggressive in challenging one another and catching one another, that I didn't feel I need to lie a lot. When they got caught often, their progress slowed, and I was able to go sure and steady. I tried to be truthful most of the time, and I could steadily collect animals. There is some chaos in how the animal values will develop. It is a collective thing. As the game progresses, you become more careful in managing the animal values, trying to keep animals of high value, or trying to devalue other animals so that yours will become higher valued. 

I didn't like the game as much as Jon predicted. It might be due to the way I played. I played in a careful, calculated way, as opposed to a daring and risky way. I didn't have to lie much. I can certainly imagine if the game was close, we would need to lie, and lie skilfully. You want to trick people into inspecting your cards which include snakes. You also want to sneak some cards through without devaluing them. The art makes the game look like a silly rowdy game, but it is not as simple as it looks.