After an unfortunate accident, Professor Esker has fallen into a downward spiral of despair and madness as she tries to raise her poor tabby from the grave. To stop her, 2-6 players will race each other to the abandoned crypt at the end of the pet cemetery to try to enact a citizen’s arrest on the distraught professor. Blocking their way, however, is an increasing hoard of undead chickens, ferrets, cats, dogs, and more beloved pets being brought back by Esker’s experiments. Will it be the sheriff, pet whisperer, cake decorator, or some other citizen who catches the crazed scientist and claim the bounty offered by the mayor? The race is on to find out and save the town!
The Pet Cemetery made its appearance on Kickstarter in late 2020 and not only reached its funding goal but doubled it. The game design, illustrations, and publishing were all done by Anthony Hore. Hore is a graphic designer based in Canada and The Pet Cemetery is his first game. It was an unfortunate side note that a large chunk of the art of the game is lost on the punchboards. After punching out tokens, a ferret in flight was suddenly without their companion and professionals were without their tools of the trade, making them more ambiguous.
The first thing players must do before settling in to play a game of The Pet Cemetery is build the cemetery itself. The cemetery board is made up of three tiles: a start board, a middle board, and an end. There are multiple options included in the box for building the cemetery so each experience can be as easy or difficult as players want. Each player is then randomly dealt a player card and places its matching standee behind the starting line at the beginning of the cemetery. They also receive a hand of three cards. One handcuffs card per player is shuffled into the deck of remaining cards and the deck is placed facedown nearby. The race to the crypt to stop Professor Esker is ready to begin and the player with the most pets gets to start their turn first.
Gameplay is fairly straightforward in that on a player’s turn they can either move one orthogonal space from their current position, draw a card from the draw deck, or play a card from their hand. They then perform an action corresponding to the space they land on, be that spawning undead pets; moving the pets already in play; or drawing additional cards from a treasure chest. Cards and player abilities mix this simplicity up a bit by adding things such as stealing cards from other players; jumping over adjacent spaces; taking extra turns; and even switching places with others. This all adds up to players trying to balance between getting across the finish line first and doing their best to stop others from doing so. They will need to have a handcuffs card in their possession to do so and claim the win, but even having drawn one into their hand and sprinting for the finish line is not guaranteed with everything going on when victory seems to be only a few move actions away.
The Pet Cemetery is a great game to get friends and fellow gamers to the table 30 minutes at a time! There is just enough take-that mechanics to still keep the game light-hearted and quick. The games we played never felt bogged down or as if the action wasn’t constantly being pushed forward as we made our mad dash to the end of the bout. There are enough characters, each with their own unique ability, to keep games fresh and varied. It is easy to learn, quick to play, and language-independent enough that with a bit of help even those too young to read the cards were soon using them with enough effect to enjoy the action themselves. We would say the recommendation of 13+ could for sure be stretched, but it really depends on your group. Our circle found no problem having children of 5 and 6 play just fine, but any younger than that may be unrealistic. We all enjoyed this game and would recommend it make it to your game night this spooky season and beyond!
All photos for this review were taken and edited by Krista.