Literal minutes before I sat down to write this review, my daughters ran into the room to ask where their rubber snake had gone. When I professed ignorance, they scrambled from the room while hissing loudly, “Mommy must have hidden it!”

That would make my wife the Night Terror from Playthings, the latest board game by design collective Jasper Beatrix. Like the rest of the collective’s catalog, Playthings sits somewhere on a sliding scale between imaginative play and fuzzy rules. When I first tried it with adults, I wasn’t sure it worked. Later, with kids aged twelve and six, it became as magical as leaving a booby trap for Santa Claus, equal parts childlike wonder and childlike mischief.

Setting traps for Santa Claus the Night Terror.

At heart, Playthings is about becoming a child again. You live in a big house, as large as you remember it from childhood, with ceilings that seem impossibly tall and dark corners that are inky enough to conceal living shadows. One of those shadows is the Night Terror, a meddlesome spirit that hides toys.

So, naturally, you do what any clever child would do. You set traps for the Night Terror. Maybe, if you can get away with it, you even stay up late to catch the shadow red-handed.

I’ve always had a soft spot for games that literalize their actions, that ask players to physically conduct whatever activities their tabletop avatars are supposedly undertaking in the moment. One of my favorite gaming moments of all time happened when a friend tossed a flashbang through a doorway at some unsuspecting terrorists, only for it to ping off the doorframe to blind and deafen our entire squad, not to mention raise the terrorists’ suspicions. Because the game in question was SEAL Team Flix, the unforced error had not come courtesy of a die roll or card flip, but because of a friend’s crooked finger pelting a disc directly into a centimeter-tall cardboard wall.

Everything in Playthings is thus literalized. Laying a trap consists of… well, take your pick. Stringing triplines across the board. Scattering jingle bells across the floor. Sliding a finger under the cloth mat to feel the reverberations of the Night Terror’s pitter-patter. You’re Kevin McCallister, hellbent on catching the Easter Bunny.

Where is your toy?

The Night Terror, then, places the toy chests while the kids close their eyes. There are nine in total, and while there are a few general rules to abide by, as with all Jasper Beatrix games the margins between those rules are sometimes runny and gray.

An example. The rules state that the Night Terror needs to state the current toy while placing it. “Bouncy ball,” they might say. But at what point do they say it? When they pick up the chest? Right as they place it? Somewhere in between? Is there a time limit to how long they can hold onto the block, or can they let the seconds stretch into discomfort? Can they tap it against the mat, against somebody’s hand, against the box that somebody has used to block off half the house, and then move it to another locale? Can they intrusively slide their finger up and down mine, the way Geoff did, the pervert finally given free reign?

This might seem like a weakness in the rules. To some degree, it is. I didn’t appreciate having my fingers fondled, and even non-pest rules lawyers will find plenty of wiggle room for interpretation and debate.

But this doesn’t have to be a problem. It’s just that Playthings is a little more reliant on making sure everybody is on the same page. It has that in common with plenty of TTRPGs. Not only in its regard for consent and setting topical boundaries, but in establishing who you’re playing with. How your group views the magic circle. Whether it’s okay to “play along” with a game, or demand that its every ruling and clause are ironbound.

Assistance comes in many forms.

Because let me tell you, Playthings is a big damn hoot with the right people.

Let’s rewind. So the kids lay their traps. Then the Night Terror scatters their toys around the house.

And then there’s the hunt. The kids search for their toys. Much as with the booby traps, which are drawn from a deck, there are little aids to this process. You get your first guess for free, working with your fellow children to uncover the most toys. This is desirable not only when “playing along,” but because the entire group earns bonus points for every toy they discover together. So you say, “Hey, I think your doll might be over here,” or “I heard a bell over there when the Night Terror put down your train.” And then everybody places a finger on the chest they think holds their toy. If they’re right, they earn a couple points.

After that, the leftover children get an extra nudge in the form of another card. Maybe a scavenger hunt flips a single chest face-up. Or hopscotch has you toss some tokens onto the mat, hold a string between them, and reveal every chest it touches. Or hide and seek lets you shove your hand under the mat and wriggle it around until a single chest spills its contents.

Whatever the specifics, these little games are a delight. They recall childhood not only in their descriptions, but via their half-logic, the way a young child might strike upon a peculiar solution to an imagined problem. It isn’t enough to make the toy hunt easy, not by any means, but it’s one more data point among many. Hopefully enough to find your toy.

Or you could just peek.

Leashed!

That’s right. Peeking is allowed. When the Night Terror announces your teddy bear, you can peer through your fingers or squeeze a glimpse through your eyelids. It’s entirely possible to see exactly where your toy is placed, like a kid who’s successfully powered through to midnight. Oh. So that’s the mystery. Santa Claus is [redacted].

But there are downsides. After the toy hunt has wrapped up, the Night Terror begins a guessing game. One by one, they guess whether each child peeked or not. If the Night Terror is correct, they earn some points. Better yet, if they catch a peeker, they steal those points directly from that player. It’s only after they’ve visited each player or made a wrong guess that they stop.

This, after everything else, the booby traps and little games, the guesswork and teamwork and maybe even confidence work plied against your fellow players, is the core experience that draws Playthings together. Like those other elements, this is another literalized expression of the game’s internal sense of play. Because it’s so hard to not peek. When the Night Terror announces your toy, it takes real willpower to not sneak the smallest look. For a kid, it’s almost impossible, like setting out a birthday present in one of those tissue-stuffed bags and leaving the room unattended.

Playthings permits the transgression. Encourages it, even. Because the available tools are imperfect. The traps can be circumvented or triggered prematurely. The schoolyard games only reveal tidbits. So the best solution, always, is to witness the terror with your own eyes. To uncover the identity of the monster. To pin that elf to his shelf and escape his tyranny once and for all. Just make sure you don’t get caught in the process.

And then the round is over. You continue with a new Night Terror. Once everybody has had a chance as the monster, points are tallied. That’s the game.

Some traps are better than others.

What a weird, wonderful, childlike, fuzzy-around-the-edges oddity this is. It isn’t my favorite Jasper Beatrix title, but depending on the group, scratch that, it actually might be. When I played with adults, they wheedled with the rules and asked too many questions and one of them got inappropriately handsy with my index finger. But when I played it with my kiddos, they howled with laughter. They learned shrewd new tricks. They demanded that they wanted to be the next monster. Now I have been informed by two very excited children that we are going to play it again tonight with the Night Terror herself.

Er. Mommy. I mean Mommy. We’re going to play it again tonight with Mommy. I hope she sees the beauty of this thing. The simple joy of how freely it plays.

A complimentary copy of Playthings was provided by the designer/publisher.

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