Prey Another Day (Schnitzeljagd): Cute Neon Animals, Ice-Cold Bluffs

Some games win you over with clever rules. Schnitzeljagd won us over with its colors before we’d even played it. Neon bears, neon owls, neon everything. The good news: the game under all that glow is super nice too.

It’s sold in English as Prey Another Day, and that pun is pretty much the whole idea. You’re a forest animal. Everyone else is hungry.

What is Schnitzeljagd?

A tiny bluffing card game by Brett J. Gilbert and Matthew Dunstan, published in German by Pegasus Spiele and Edition Spielwiese as Schnitzeljagd and in English as Prey Another Day. The art is by Nele Brönner. The box says 2 to 5 players, about 20 minutes, ages 8 and up.

When it joined our collection, we were too tired to try it on day one, but we couldn’t wait until the next day. We loved the cards on sight: amazing artwork, awesome colors.

How it plays

Everyone gets the same five animals: bear, wolf, lynx, owl and mouse.

• Pick in secret. Each hunt, you play one animal face down.
• Call the food chain. The animals are called from the top, starting with the bear.
• Alone means dangerous. If you’re the only player with the called animal, you name a smaller animal to hunt, and every face-down card of that kind is revealed and eaten. If two or more players picked the same animal, nothing happens for them.
• Survive and eat. A round ends when only one animal is left or after three hunts. Survivors collect food markers, and the first to five points wins.

So the bear is the strongest card in your hand, and also the most obvious one. The tension is power versus uniqueness: the bear can eat anything, but only if nobody else had the same idea. The whole game lives in that gap between “best card” and “card nobody else will play”.

Where it shines

After our first game, the verdict was quick: a super nice and simple game. That’s exactly what it is. There’s almost nothing to explain before the first hunt.

And we really like the graphics. The flashy colors make it look like nothing else on our shelf. It came back to the table, too: it shows up in our game log under its English name, Prey Another Day.

Where it stings

The look that we love is exactly what some people can’t stand. Some call the graphics “terrible” while admitting they make the game stand out, others find the colors overwhelming. Fair. Neon is a choice.

The more serious points: luck is high, sometimes your card choice hardly matters, and getting eaten early means you sit and wait. In the community, you also often hear that it doesn’t work with two players, despite what the box says.

Schnitzeljagd with kids

It’s listed at 8+. The rules won’t stop a kid. What matters more is temperament: this is a game about bluffing and about getting eaten. A child who laughs it off will have a blast. A child who hates being knocked out of a round might not.

What we hear in the community

People who like it really like it. Many talk about hilarious first games with four, about the game getting more strategic and bluffy over time, and about winning even with the lowly mouse. Players praise how quickly it plays, the table talk and the emotions. The usual recommendation: four or five players, as a warm-up or closer.

Others are split. Some aren’t sure who the game is for and feel it’s more about memorizing than playing. The big, sturdy cards and simple rules, on the other hand, win almost everyone over, us included.

Our verdict

If you have three to five people and 20 minutes, Schnitzeljagd is an easy yes for us: simple, quick and great to look at, at least if you like your forest in neon. It works for families of all kinds, as long as everyone can handle being somebody’s dinner.

If you mostly play with two, pick something else. For that, we’d hand you 7 Wonders Duel.