Game Overview: Cover Up to Win Dream Catcher and Rip Off

Today I'm covering two games that play similarly, games that challenge your visual perception and your ability to hide things from view.

Dream Catcher from Laurent Escoffier, David Franck, and Space Cow won the 2020 As d'Or for best children's game, and the art from Maud Chalmel is both cuddly and cute-scary for the young players in the target audience.

To win, you want to be the first player to fill your cloud board with dream discs, which represent you defeating the nightmares that might threaten your rest. Each game round, you reveal the next nightmare card in the central deck, then you take turns choosing a circular stuffy token, which come in four sizes, with only one of the smallest size and with enough copies of the largest size that everyone can always choose it.

Players then attempt to cover the revealed nightmare with their stuffy, ideally starting with whoever took the smallest token. If that token completely conceals the nightmare, then the player earns as many dream discs as the number of stars depicted on the stuffy: four for the smallest down to one for the largest.

Playing on the grass, far from my bed

The dream discs are stored in a stuffed pillow, and to draw them, you reach your hand into the pillow to pull them out. Doing so is one of the most comforting experiences I've ever had playing a game, possibly because it was so unexpected. I'm sometimes dumbfounded that kids get games from HABA, Selecta, and other publishers with components that are a joy to handle apart from being relevant game components, whereas most games for older players focus on functionality over frivolity. Anyway...

If that stuffy doesn't cover the nightmare, the player receives only bad dreams and night terrors, and whoever has the next smallest stuffy then attempts to banish the nightmare. As soon as one stuffy works, you know that all other stuffies the same size or larger work, too. All players who won dream discs place them on their cloud board, and the discs have different images on each side so that players can choose what they want to see, with the rules encouraging you to make up stories for how these items play a role in your dream.

Gameplay is straightforward, but (as an adult) repetitive. I don't have youngsters at my game table, so I'm not the ideal market for this title, which is a huge step up in visuals and components from Go Away Monster!, which I did play with my son when he was a toddler. Both games have the same vibe, with kids being encouraged to crush unfounded fears while in the company of other kids or a supportive parent.

Rip Off from Urtis Šulinskas and Blue Orange Games also challenges you to cover stuff, but (1) you cover two stuffs each round instead of one and (2) you decide the size of the covering by tearing apart the game!

In detail, each player receives a (fake) $100 bill at the start of the game. Each round, someone flips three double-sided cards from the deck to reveal what's on the other side: a bicycle, a skateboard, a shirt, and so on. At the same time, each player then tears off a piece of their bill that they think will cover two of the three items.

Once everyone has their piece, they demonstrate that, yes, they can "cover their expenses" by completely concealing two items of their choice. If they do so, great, they move on to the next round. If they don't, then they must throw away that piece and tear off another part of their bill, ideally doing it better this time. If they fail again, they have to go back for still more. If you run out of bill, then you're out of the game.

If only one player moves on to the next round, that player wins. If multiple people are in a round and no one succeeds in covering two items, then whoever has the largest area of bill — which can be tough to determine — wins.

The game includes a few special cards that will have you cover only one item or all three items, but otherwise gameplay is similar each round: Look at the items from a distance, size up which two have the most overlap, then figure out the minimum amount of bill you can tear off and succeed.

Detritus at game's end

You have to eyeball everything at a distance, which can be tricky depending on the angle of your seat, but if you flip over, say, the limousine and the skateboard and the scooter, you know everyone is going to cover the first two items since they're roughly the same — which can lead to rounds feeling similar, which means that Rip Off is secretly an efficiency game since every millimeter (might) matter in the long run.

In case any of the above is unclear, you can watch the games in action in the video below. Please recycle your games responsibly.