Go Cuckoo Review – Dump Your Eggs Before Child Support Arrives

Cuckoo birds are absolute jerks. They plant their eggs in other birds’ nests, leaving the host to raise the chick in their stead. This is your aim within Go Cuckoo. To win the game, you must put all of your eggs into a stranger’s nest, before the first child support payment comes in.

As far as metaphors go, that’s a bit dark. Especially for the delightful and whimsical game of Go Cuckoo. A game that starts with you splitting a handful of plastic eggs between players. Then dumping the wooden sticks in the tin, so that they’re standing up.

That’s it. That’s the setup.

Every turn, you either draw a maximum of three sticks from the tin or stop early if you draw a stick with the same colour on both ends. These special sticks also allow you to place one of your eggs in the nest.

But before that, you must place the sticks you drew horizontally around the nest. As long as they don’t touch the table or any other external support, you can place them wherever. The sky is the limit.

There are a few rules around what happens when a stick or egg falls from the nest. In general, you just have to repair the nest and forfeit the rest of your turn.

Continue playing until you’ve run out of eggs. From then on, your goal is to place Kiki Cuckoo in the nest. She’s about twice the size of the eggs and could use a monthly subscription to Jenny Craigs. Not to body shame, but she’s a big wooden lass that can destroy even the sturdiest of nests.

Succeeding in getting Kiki Cuckoo on the nest without anything dropping to the table. Then congratulations, you won the game.

Never over easy

Go Cuckoo has the easiest setup and rules explanation of any game I’ve played. Letting you get straight into the action before anyone has second thoughts about playing board games.

Beyond that though, Go Cuckoo is a great game, filled with tense moments that challenge your dexterity. Whenever you let go of an egg or stick, and the nest takes on the weight, you always have a moment of doubt. Where your heart races and your hands begin to sweat.

But as exciting as it is to play, it’s equally exciting to spectate. Not only does the game look amazing on the table., it’s easy to understand. The simplistic struggle of placing eggs and sticks is something everyone can empathise with.

However, the real fun of Go Cuckoo is when you embrace your inner jerk (or inner cuckoo). Because while you’re all contributing to the nest, there’s only one winner. So it’s against your best interests to build a strong and stable nest. Once everyone understands this, things can get a little avant-garde. With nests pulled straight out of Architectural Digest, that have scientists questioning the laws of physics.

This instability serves to increase the tension and the spectacle of the game.

Before people understand the competitive nature of the game, you might have some dud games. As players focus on building stable nests early on. And then take turns performing Space Jam slam dunks of their eggs without even a wobble from the nest.

When this happens, all of the stress and tension, that Go Cuckoo is usually so good at bringing out, disappears. And without this, there’s no excitement and the game fizzles out.

Before you buy…

Unfortunately, Go Cuckoo isn’t colour-blind accessible. Given the predominance of colour blindness within our society, this makes it troublesome to pull it out. This is also the reason you see markings on all of my sticks.

Otherwise, not everything in Go Cuckoo is sunny side up. One rule Go Cuckoo gets wrong is that when a player knocks sticks off the nest it’s up to them to put them back. Remembering their goal is to make it as unstable as possible for the next person, they can take an age placing these sticks again in the most precarious positions. Not caring if they fall off again.

Men at Work solved this problem by getting the next person in line to remedy any mistakes. Thereby giving them an incentive not to drop the sticks again, and make it stable for their turn.

Outside of this, Go Cuckoo knocks it out of the park as a dexterity game. It’s quick to play, set up, and teach, but still provides a fun game to play and watch. It’s a great introduction to modern board games and a wonderful dexterity game.