SPIEL Essen 26 Preview: Mad Cat Sad Cat

Mad Cat Sad Cat

Each year since its founding in 2021, German publisher Loosey Goosey Games has released one or more new games, sometimes from owner Andreas Preiss and sometimes from outside designers.

For 2026, Preiss has a new design of his own, Mad Cat Sad Cat, with this being a 2-5 player game in which each turn you're either trying to create valuable dice combinations or gamble on the combinations the active player will create.

In more detail, when you're the active player, you start by rolling five six-sided dice that feature:

• 3 different "mad cat" images with a white background
• 2 different "sad cat" images with a black background
• 1 wild image showing both black and white

You must set aside at least one die after a roll. You can always set aside wild dice, but you can't set aside both mad cats (white) and sad cats (black). If you can't claim a scoring combination — two pair, a full house, or four- or five-of-a-kind — you must roll again, and as long as you can set aside at least one die after a roll, you don't bust.

Once you're locked in to collecting either white or black dice, that is, you haven't set aside only jokers, each other player chooses a "mooch" card and places it face down. While they're doing this, you place 2 point tokens on each scoring combination card of the other color, as well as on the "catpot". In other words, if you're trying to score a white-dice combination now, you're boosting the payout for future black-dice combinations.

If you have a scoring combination, you can stop and score it immediately, taking the point tokens from the matching scoring card, or you can keep rolling. After each roll, if the set-aside dice match the scoring condition on a player's mooch card, they reveal it and score all the point tokens on the matching scoring card; if several players mooched the same way, they split these token evenly, leaving behind the remainder.

If you fail to set aside a die or you've set aside all five dice without scoring, any players who had bet on you failing take all the points (or split the points) from the catpot. If you manage to get five wilds, then you score the catpot for yourself!

Once the point token pool has been exhausted, compare totals to see who will be glad and who will be mad or sad.

Good Kitties

Emily Vincent's Pink Hawk Games debuted in 2026 with Pirates of the High Teas, a game of her own design, and similar to Loosey Goosey, the next two Pink Hawk titles will include one from her and one from an outside designer.

Vincent's Good Kitties has 1-4 players using their feline powers to scratch, build, bat, wiggle, and zooooom through the house to collect supplies, build contraptions, and complete mission objectives before their humans wake up. You need to catch mice along the way, both to "power up your cat" and to keep the mice from accomplishing their own plans, while also evading the dog — or better yet, blaming it for whatever mess you make.

From the publisher:

Good Kitties comes with eight escalating missions that can be played in order or standalone, plus a teaching mission to help guide players through learning the rules. Start with simple missions to control the food and water, and advance towards impressive feats like creating pocket dimensions to hide in. Every mission comes in its own envelope, with custom components and fun new rules.

Super Chonk

Good Kitties will be crowdfunded in Q3 2026, along with Ben Jones' Super Chonk, a quick-playing design in which 2-6 players ignore the advice of their veterinarians and feed their cats as much food as possible.

Each round, multiple bowls on the table are seeded with different types of food. Each player chooses a speed card in their hand from 1-4, and at the same time everyone slaps their card next to the bowl where they want to eat. If you're faster than everyone else to a bowl — that is, you played a lower number — then you eat as many nibbles of food as the number you played. Cats who reach a bowl later can eat more, assuming any food remains.

If you play the same number as another cat at the same bowl, you bonk heads and each get only a random treat from the bag instead of whatever you had your eye on.

At game's end, you throw up whatever food you ate the most of, so don't gorge yourself on one dish. To win, you want to eat a balanced diet — and a lot of it.