It has been a while since I made any updates to Squirrel or Fox?, despite the many hours I put in. Looking back, the problem wasn’t a lack of ideas. It was the opposite: I had too many. It wasn’t until I started limiting myself that things finally clicked.

Early game concept

The earliest prototype of the game only had two types of cards: the foxes and the squirrels. The shuffled deck was put in the center of the table, then players flipped cards from the deck and said what they saw. If a player make a mistake, this player would collect all of the flipped cards as penalty points. The Player with the fewest penalty points at the end of the deck would be the winner of the game.

Playtester feedback

I tried the game with my (very young) nephews and they seemed to enjoy it. Playing with older children and adults was not so encouraging. The game was not challenging enough and so it was very easy to finish the game with no penalty points. The playtesters were full of suggestions on how I could add some difficulty:

• What if there are more types of animals? 
• What if you race to slap the box or blurt out the answer?
• What if you add a reverse card or other special action cards?
• What if we make it harder to tell the difference between the animals?
• What if we add memory challenges?

I wanted to stick to a single question, “is it a squirrel or a fox?”, so most of these suggestions were not considered. I started to test the remaining ideas.

Adding a new card type

I decided to add a new card type: the box. It's purpose was to:

1. Increase the chances of players messing up and receiving penalty points
2. Refresh the discard pile so players would not get as many penalty points for a single mistake

Players were supposed to start a new discard pile every time a box card was flipped. If they said an animal name instead, they would collect the discard pile as penalty points. The box card added some drama, but did not add much difficulty.

Adding game variations

I decided to add two game variations to the rules that would increase the difficulty further.

Variation 1: Communication challenge

The idea for variation 1 was simple. The game played normally except that you had to say the animal on the card before yours. I expected people to make more mistakes following this rule. This variation was successful for groups who placed the new card over the previous one before speaking. Some players, however, would not look at the cards they flipped, making the rule of little use.

Variation 2: Memory and speed challenges

The second variation uses the box in the following way:

1. Flip a card and say the name of the animal pictured on the card, but...
2. If there is a box, you race to slap the box.
3. The last one to slap the box must say the name of the animal on the bottom card of the discard pile.
4. Mess up and you will collect the flipped cards and points against you.

Players always had a 50-50 chance of getting the answer right even if they were guessing. I liked that it was still easy for very young children to play - and feel smart while doing so.