Counting Zzzzs, by designer Joan Wendland, was published late 2003 by Joan's company, Blood and Cardstock Games. I had been wanting to pick this up as Joan's first game, Showbiz Shuffle, is one of my favorite light games, especially to play with non-gamers. I was hoping Counting Zzzzs would be as much fun and also be good for non-gamers. I've played it five times now, and I'm glad to say it does not disappoint. There is more game here than there is in Showbiz Shuffle, but there is also a lot of hilarity to draw in the novice.

The gameplay is pretty simple - at least, it's easier to play than it is to explain :-) You have two basic kinds of cards in the deck, 112 dream elements and 28 action cards. Dream element cards have one type (person, place, thing, or verb) and one or more themes (nightmare, surreal, fantasy, work/school, domestic). Type and theme are indicated on each card. Some dream element cards also have a positive or negative bonus, and some are 'context cards' that have a positive OR negative bonus (or, uh, 'non-bonus' as the case may be :-) based on the overall number of positive or negative cards in the finished dream. Action cards are 'special effects' that let you affect your own or someone else's dream, wake someone up, let you stay asleep when someone else tries to wake you up, etc.

There are three phases to each turn. In the first phase, you must fill your hand to five cards. In the second, you must add one dream element to your dream (or start a new dream if you are not currently dreaming) by laying down an element card face up in front of you. The tricky part is, the new element MUST match one of the themes of the card before it in the dream order, and must NOT match the type. For instance, if the last card played in your dream is The Beach card, a Place with the Fantasy and Domestic Themes, you could NOT play another Place card, but you could play a Person, Thing or Verb. You also could not play a card that did not have either the Fantasy or Domestic symbols on it.

Finally, you must either add a dream element to someone else's dream (following the same theme and types rules as when you add to your own dreams) OR play an action card OR discard one card from your hand.

Points are scored when you wake up from a finished dream (that is, a dream with 5 to 10 dream elements, smaller dreams are considered dream fragments and are not scored, and after 10 cards, you automatically 'wake up'). You get one point for each card, plus or minus any bonuses. First player to get 40 points (40 winks, get it, get it?) OR player with the most points when the deck is exhausted is the winner.

OK, that's the boring stuff. The REALLY fun part of this is getting people to make up plots for their dreams. This leads to plots like (dream elements are in all caps) 'Ok, I'm sitting on the BEACH, EATING lunch with my FAIRY GODMOTHER, and a GIANT CAT comes and steals our food, so we go RUNNING after it, and we corner it in my PARENT'S HOUSE, and it gives us a BEER to let it go.' This is a good dream that would score the dreamer 14 points, besides making all the players laugh like crazy! This would probably not be your cup of tea if you want a serious tactical game, but it's a great light game. Guys, if you are trying to get your wife/S.O. to play more games with you, pick this up. If you are looking for something to play with non-gamers or casual games, and they're ready for the next step up after Apples to Apples, get this game.

Caveats - just a few. The early edition of the game has one card that is missing the theme symbols, the FAQ on the manufacturer's website says to consider it as having all themes. For a light game, it tends to be a longer game, my two four-player games have lasted about 90 minutes each - BUT part of that is because we're getting so silly. With four players, it seems you are more likely to run through the whole deck. Because people are getting silly, some people I have played with tend to forget to consider anything but building a humorous plot and so will play negative value cards into their own dream, or positive cards into someone else's dream.

But overall, I'm really happy with the game. We're having a lot of laughs with it, my non-gamer sister asks when I'm gonna bring it over again, and it's a darned fun game!! I expect it to get a lot of play in 2004, especially on Family Game Nights for our homeschooling group.