Horsesh!T

Don’t step in sh!t.

SEt up

• 1 x 7x7 square grid board

• A pawns for each player. Representing a Chess Knight.

• A collection of bottlecaps, coins, or tokens. Enough to fill the board.

• The game starts on an open field.

• Player Knights are placed randomly on any open square.

• Random draw determines which player has the opening move.

• Game play moves clockwise.

Number of Players

• 2 to 5

Objective

• Don’t step in shit.

Rules

• On your turn, move your Knight to any open space.

• Knights move in an ‘L’ pattern, two spaces in any adjacent direction, with an additional space to either side.

• The Knight’s horse drops steaming piles of dung where ever it was.

• Be careful not to step in it, stinky feet is the losing condition.

Player Variations

• Horsesh!t can be played by 2 to 5 players on a 7x7 board.

• You can include more players on a larger grid.

• There is a single player version in which you try to cover the entire board without stepping in a pile.

History

• Horsesh!t is a Rico original game created in 2025.

• It exemplifies how I create all my original games, I simply ask, “What if..?” and the magic happens from there.

Game Theory / Game Dynamics

• This game is proudly served up on The Bar Arcade Collection shelf, and intended to accommodate all my bar drinking friends at their favorite game friendly watering hole.

• The beauty if this game is the simplicity of the rules. If you already know how a Chess Knight moves, the rest fits on a fiddlestick.

• The other thing that make this game special is the game pieces. It encourages ecofriendly repurposing. Corks and bottlecaps are usually in an abundant supply in most bars, so you will never run out. The bottlecaps do not need to be in uniformed either, any flavor will do.

• All you really need is a bonafide RicoBoard to play on. (my secret sauce)

• The 7x7 board is the perfect size to mechanically keep this game fast. With up to 5 players, each will only get a maximum of 8 moves.

• I could have set the premise to something else, like ‘Crime Scene: Criminals leave footprints wherever they were, don’t contaminate the evidence.’, but I make games for adults, and the name of this game says it all.

I hope you enjoy playing games,
as much as I have making them.