Thrift Treasure: You Gotta Be Kitten Me! Card Game

With the absence of our Thrift Treasure articles over the past few weeks, you might have assumed we had hit a dry spell. The opposite is true. We’ve been finding plenty of treasures while searching thrift stores. Our excuse is we have been travelling a bit to game conventions. Our annual trek to Gen Con is always accompanied by a Goodwill stop or three.

Now that things are a little back to normal, we can highlight what we found along the way. Our first grab was this You Gotta Be Kitten Me! card game. We found it at the Gen Con flea market, and it was only $1! I can always produce four quarters to try out any game.

You Gotta Be Kitten Me! is a card version of the famous game, Liar’s Dice. Using a deck of fifty-five cards, you will shuffle and deal out five cards to each player to set up the game. If playing with seven or more, only deal out three.

At its heart, You Gotta Be Kitten Me! is a bidding game where you are trying to be the last person to not run out of cards. On each card there is a colored accessory depicted on one or more black and white animals. There are three different accessories along with three unique colors. The number of times they appear on a card represents how many of each item should be counted.

First, the start player will bid a number of colors or accessories, taking into account how many may be present in everyone’s hands. Next, play passes clockwise to the next player, who must either increase the bid or challenge the last bid. To increase the bid, they must bid a higher number of accessories or colors and do not have to match the previous bid’s item/color.

When a player feels they cannot bid higher, they may challenge the prior bid. The dealer turns over the top card of the deck, adding it to everyone’s hands. If the bid was met by the contents of the hands, the challenging player loses a card from their hand. If the challenged bid was too high, the last bidder loses a card. Whomever lost the card becomes the dealer for the next round.

If a player were to lose their last card, they are out of the game. The last person left when all other players are out is the winner of You Gotta Be Kitten Me! Advanced rules also allow a player to call, “Purrfect”. This means they believe the last bidder is exactly correct. If this is right, the player that called Purrfect receives an extra card in their hand while the person who made the bid loses a card. If the total is greater than or less than the bid, the Purrfect player loses a card.

What makes You Gotta Be Kitten Me! a bit different from the original Liar’s dice version is the fact that cards can be worth more than one item or color. Additionally, there are wild cards which act as any color or accessory. There’s even a “Skip” card you can play so you don’t have to bid or challenge! Because dice are easier to misplace than cards, this version is also a bit easier to travel with.

Brand new examples are available on Amazon for under MSRP. You’ll also find them at your favorite local game store!

Do you prefer card or dice games?