Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
From time to time, publishers send unsolicited games to reviewers. Because I have covered so many games in the catalog of Blue Orange Games, one of their new products shows up on my doorstep from time to time, games that I don’t remember asking for. I typically cover the games I have requested first, before tackling extra games to ensure I honor the order in which games arrive at the house.
A few months ago, a game called Tap A Bell’O showed up on my doorstep. I broke open the box and stared at the product for a few minutes, wondering if I had asked for it. (After checking my notes, I confirmed that I did not.) One of my kids came downstairs and saw the game—essentially, a box containing a fire engine red bell, sitting on top of a small circular deck of cards—and asked what it was.
“Blue Orange sent a new game,” I replied. “We’ll get to it as soon as we get through the large pile of review games in the basement.” And that was that…for four months.
Fast forward to the present. We were cleaning up an area near our kitchen, and we found that one of the kids had moved Tap A Bell’O to their toy stash in a basket, unbeknownst to me that it had gone missing. “Ahh, sorry Daddy,” said the 11-year-old. “I played with the bell a few times, then put the game there.”
“Can we play it?” my 8-year-old said. “I want to hit the bell.”
So, we did. Tap A Bell’O keeps it simple. It’s a “slap” game, similar to games like Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza and Paco’s Party, the two slap-game winners of the last few years in our household. In Tap A Bell’O, cards are played to the table, and when a pair of numbers, colors, or symbols is showing on the face-up cards, the first player to clap then tap the bell (oh) gets all of the cards that have been played in a round, added to the bottom of their draw pile. When any player is out of cards, the game ends and the player with the most cards wins.
Yes, this rules format rips off a number of other games you and I have played before. Nothing about it should be interesting. Well, that’s true, until the first player nearly breaks a finger trying to slam the large red bell or the first time someone swings their arms so wildly that they swipe the bell right off the table.
Slam the Bell, Bell
Those rules I described earlier? Those are all of them, although the rulebook for Tap A Bell’O is not a winner. In fact, my family (even my wife joined for a four-player game) played the game wrong in our first game thanks to a bumpy interpretation of what the game is aiming to do. With games lasting 5-7 minutes, this was not a major issue, so we set it up to play a second time. During that second play, we missed a minor twist to the way penalties are dealt when a player taps the bell but doesn’t clap first.
So, our third play was the first clean one. But let’s pause there. If the game was terrible, we would have bailed, and my wife—let’s just say that “patience” is NOT her nickname—would have found something else to do. But we all agreed that there was something to the dumb fun on display here, so we kept at it.
And the third play created real magic, in the form of yelling, screaming, laughter, and that swipe of the bell that caused it to be launched off our kitchen table and onto the floor, maybe 10 feet away. The Bell family got aggressive, people. Watching and waiting for a pair of fours to show up was a blast. The amount of flinching became comical. Multiple players committed penalties. There’s no runaway leader problem in a game that lasts five minutes, so in that third game, the 11-year-old won a massive pile of cards, essentially putting them at the apex of the hill with little time left to make up for our losses.
Tap A Bell’O is only so-so, if I’m being honest. As a design, it doesn’t present anything that we don’t already have in the house. But it was fun, and as an afternoon diversion, it worked. Playing it on a small table where everyone can slam the bell is the right move. And if you don’t own any other slam card games, Tap A Bell’O fits the bill—er, bell?—in a very loud way.
Tap A Bell'O details
- Designer: Thierry Denoual
- Artists: N/A
- Publishers: Blue Orange Games
- Release Date: 2015
- Player count : 2 - 9
- Age range : 5+
- Mechanism(s): Acting, Pattern Recognition, Player Elimination, Real-Time
- BGG Geek Rating: 5.43189 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 2.5.
- More articles about Tap A Bell'O.
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