Cheating Moth Review
Cheating isn’t just allowed, it’s mandatory.
This slight-of-hand party game will have you twisting and chuckling to make cards disappear… please make sure you actually like cheating. About 15 minutes, 3-5 players.
Video published October 4th, 2021
Simple card play, with a catch!
Cheat to make cards disappear off the table!
Use surroundings to facilitate cheating.
Overview & How to Play
Cheating is good. No, its great, it’s fantastic! That is, if you do it in Cheating Moth.
You’re trying to get rid of your hand of cards, playing one card every turn to a central pile—you gotta play one that is one number higher, or lower than the one currently there.
Of course to get rid of cards faster… go ahead and sneak them behind the table, under your phone, etc. etc. You’re gonna have to do this at some point too, because there’s a literal purple moth card you can’t play normally.
BUT BUT BUT BUT. There’s rules on cheating- I know, kind of ironic, but it’s here not to break the game.
You must always show your hand of cards above the table.
If someone is caught cheating, you can’t cheat while that’s being resolved.
You can never cheat out your last card in hand.
You can ONLY cheat away one card at a time.
Pros
First things first with slight of hand- you gotta make sure you can actually get away with it. And the cards definitely facilitate all that tomfoolery. The grey backs are very unassuming to blend into all sorts of carpet and furniture. The borders being all black REALLY helps if you want to do some double card plays- that is playing a card and then sneaking in another card behind it.
The game just has a ridiculous amount of cheating opportunity in general. You can thrive in the mayhem of people being distracted by the special card abilities actions to just cheat on the side- like how about everyone just slamming the central Mosquito, while you use that sound to disguise a card drop to the floor? Or just be the first to slam a card for the Cockroach, and look, you hid another card underneath.
Cheating is also really directed too, for mind games and eye-gaze-awareness, where only one of your friends is the Guard Bug who is watching out for cheaters. They can’t cheat while they have that role, so there’s a really strong incentive to catch cheaters!
Cheating Moth’s cheating potential is just HUGE in variety, letting you be incredibly creative. You can wear baggy clothes to stuff cards in. You can social engineer your friends to fake a phone call. Or you can start a giant argument for no reason and pretend to pause the game. The Guard Bug can’t catch everyone cheating, right?
Cons & Nitpicks
Funnily enough though, there’s not ENOUGH rules on cheating. Only have 4 rules don’t cover that much ground, since cheating as an idea will have all shades of grey.
A big one was, what is the time frame in which you can catch someone cheating? Is it before the next person plays a card from their and? Can you internally ponder whether or not to call them out on cheating, and then pull the trigger based off of their body language post-cheating?
Plus, when they say you have to get rid of one card at a time from your hand, is there a time limit on how quickly you can chain the same cheat move? Like, I can get rid of A LOT of cards in REALLY fast succession from my hand by dropping them on the ground—but hey I dropped each card individually, right?
You gotta iron out at least SOMETHING more concrete for your group if you like structure, like saying that there should be a delay of 2-5 seconds per each card cheat. When contesting whether or not someone cheated, the Guard Bug should get the final say if there’s a dispute.
Then as some more serious players might imagine, there’s pretty big imbalances with the card abilities, like the ‘Mosquito’ card giving a certain player 4 extra cards if they lose its slapping mini game… well I guess get better at cheating right?
