Busy Beaks
2-4 players | Ages 8+ | 30 minutes
Publisher: Joey Games, 2023
Art: Sarah Allen
Get to know Australia’s most fascinating birds in this colourful card game. Each player collects bird cards and gathers them into flocks to score points. Whoever makes the most valuable flocks wins! Each bird also has a special ability - like the Powerful Owl who lets you search the deck for the card you really need, or the mimicking Magpie who lets you copy another card. Choose which birds you want to use each game to make every play feel different.
Busy Beaks was so much fun to design because it took me back to one of my favourite game mechanisms - rummy-style set collection. The hook I came up with here is that every card can be used to build a set to score points (a flock of birds) or can be played for a special power (the bird’s ability). It was a real challenge coming up with unique powers for all 14 birds in the game, but it allowed me to explore many different ways that cards can be collected, swapped, and searched for. Busy Beaks is one of the launch games for my publishing company, Joey Games and we were very happy to work with the fantastic local illustrator Sarah Allen. Her bird pictures bring so much character and colour to the game, and show a real fondness for Australia’s amazing birdlife.
Links
➚ Busy Beaks at Joey Games