Raccoon Tycoon: The Fat Cat Expansion

Just as we were putting barrels into the warehouse, a fifth player arrived for the evening’s second main course. I had dusted off Global Mogul, Wealth of Nations, and Food Chain Magnate: The Ketchup Mechanism & Other Ideas, especially since Ioannis Prodromos was with us again. But I had received my vaccine the previous night and, while I had no serious issue, the general fogginess made me reject every heavy option. I wanted something lighter, yet with enough economic “complexity” to close the evening nicely. Raccoons, tycoons, and an expansion promising to make the experience deluxe: what could possibly go wrong?

At its core, Raccoon Tycoon is a simple resource-brokering game with set collection and auctions. You gather and manage goods, try to use them well, and chase the collections and opportunities that appear in front of you. It is an accessible economic formula, designed not to scare off anyone who does not want to spend the evening inside spreadsheets.

Interaction mainly comes through the market and the auctions, where other players’ choices affect what is valuable and what you can get hold of in time. The problem is that the game stops before reaching the substance of those ideas. Fat Cat adds some rather uninteresting buildings and makes the production more deluxe, while also pushing even further some buildings that were already broken. Luxury, then, but not exactly the useful kind of variety.

I have no objection to a kids-friendly gateway economic game; that is what it wants to be, and that is what it is. I just wish there were a second, more demanding ruleset, so I would not feel as though I had been sold an economic game and handed a very cute introduction instead. I had a pleasant time, but I would not play it again soon. For something in the same space, I would play The Rich and the Good a hundred times over.