Last year, we at The Cardboard Cantina tried and reviewed three of Funko Games‘ holiday-inspired, stocking-stuffer-sized games. With the release of Stitch: Merry Mischief!, the Funko team has brought yet another family-friendly novelty game to the table. Experiment 626 (a.k.a. Stitch) can hardly contain himself on a typical day, but his excitement abounds this holiday season as Christmas gets closer and closer. This mischievous little blue alien is exploding with enthusiasm and, in his frenzy, keeps tearing open all of the gifts! To save the day, and perhaps even the holiday itself, it is up to you and your friends to sneak as many presents as you can past Stitch and hide them for safekeeping.

Stitch: Merry Mischief! is an extremely lightweight card game for 2-6 players. The game focuses on push-your-luck mechanics and some item/shape recognition. Each game begins with shuffling the cards and dealing a 6-card starting hand to the players. The remaining cards are placed in a draw pile in the center of the play space with the Present die nearby. Players will also receive a Saved Presents token to represent their present stash. All remaining player tokens are returned to the box and left unused.

To play, players will simultaneously choose up to three cards from their hand and place them facedown in the play area. Once everyone has made their selection, the cards are flipped face up. Each of the “Nice Stitch” and “Naughty Stitch” icons are counted to determine how many times the die gets rolled. When rolling the Present die, all cards with a matching item are discarded. Any cards that manage to slip by are placed underneath the player’s Saved Presents token. Some cards are trickier than others because they have more than one symbol. Players that discarded cards will draw replacements into their hands. Rounds continue in this fashion until one or more players run out of cards. Those players will draw a card into their present stash while the remaining players will all get one more round. At the end of the final round, players will count up how many items are on their saved cards to determine the winner. Don’t forget that some cards have two items on them! Those cards are worth two points! The player who managed to sneak the most gifts past Stitch wins.

Stitch is a beloved character in our household. While the game is a Disney-licensed, Stitch-themed product, the illustrations for this game don’t scream Disney animation to me. Instead, I’m reminded of my own attempts at artwork with watercolor pencils – and I love that fact! I also appreciate the inclusion of Lilo’s evil meter from the movie depicting Naughty vs. Nice Stitch. It is a nice touch and a great way to pay homage to the movie while working within the holiday theme. Though Stitch: Merry Mischief! is a card game meant to be played by children, it still has enough depth that adults can enjoy it as a lightweight filler during the holidays. Full games can be played within five to ten minutes so they will certainly hold the short attention span of a small child. The more we played, the more we found ourselves developing strategies to smuggle presents into our stash. The real trick, however, will be smuggling this stocking stuffer past our family members and into the littlest one’s stocking!

All photos of Funko Games products used for this review were taken and edited by Krista.