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Fruit Spy box art
2005 Ranked #10,490

Fruit Spy

A bluffing area-majority game has animal spies place hidden cards at orchards to claim the tastiest fruit. Moving farmers and revealing tools can change who controls each site, while exposure can leave a player empty-handed.

Family Games Animals Bluffing Area Majority / Influence Hand Management

Players

3-5

Play time

15-20 min

Age

8+

Complexity

1.26/5

Rating

5.80

Harder to teach Highly interactive Deep strategy

Overview

At a glance

Is this game right for my group?

ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.

Teachability 2.3/5

Harder to teach

Replay value 4.1/5

High replayability

Interaction 3.8/5

Highly interactive

Player scaling 4.4/5

Scales well

Strategic depth 4.7/5

Deep strategy

See all 5 specifications

How it plays

How does it play?

Fancying themselves spies like those in the movies, a group of little animal rascals have decided to sneak into Farmer Papa's neighboring orchard to gather gardening intelligence (i.e., fruit) they can use on their own farm.

Core mechanisms

Key systems that shape the decisions players make.

Read the full game description

Fancying themselves spies like those in the movies, a group of little animal rascals have decided to sneak into Farmer Papa's neighboring orchard to gather gardening intelligence (i.e., fruit) they can use on their own farm. Competing with both open and hidden information, they must identify bluffing and beware of the others' weapons. The player who can obtain the most yummiest fruit will be recognized as the best fruit spy! In Fruit Spy, six farmhouse boards are arranged in a circle in a random order, with 2-4 fruit tokens (valued 1-7) placed randomly upon them. Two stand-up figures — Farmer Papa and Daly — are placed on their respective starting farmhouses. Each player has eight spy cards in hand — trick cards valued 1-7 and one tool card — and on a player's turn, they place one card face down on a farmhouse of their choice. If another face-down card is already there, the player turns it face up; if the revealed card is a tool card, then both the new card and the tool card are discarded. When cards are played on the farmhouse where one (or both) of the figures stands, that figure is moved — clockwise for Daly, counterclockwise for Farmer Papa. The game ends when one of the figures reaches its starting farmhouse or when all players have played all of their cards. Fruit tokens are then awarded in order of the players' total strength on each farmhouse: the strongest player takes the fruit token with the highest Yum-yum value, the second-strongest player takes the next highest-valued token, and so on. Any remaining fruit tokens go to the strongest player. Daly is scored as a fruit token of value 10 while Farmer Papa kicks everyone out of the farmhouse where he stands at the end of the game empty-handed. The player with the highest Yum-yum value total wins! Earlier versions of Fruit Spy were titled Dead Man's Treasure, with players fighting for treasure chests in exactly the same manner as Fruit Spy.

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Editions

Language and publisher variants currently recorded in the catalog.

Edition Year Language Publisher / Region
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Player resources

Rulebooks, player aids, FAQs, and solo resources.

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Game and edition data

All specifications (5)

Play and group

Players
3–5
Best with
3–5
Play time
15–20 min
Age
8+
Complexity
1.3/5
Credits and catalog connections

Credits

Designers

1
Reiner Knizia

Artists

4
Design Edge Tomasz Jedruszek Ricky Ru Arthur Wagner

Publishers

4
AURUM, Inc. Egmont Polska Jolly Thinkers Piatnik

Linked items

No published linked games yet.