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Rule Summary

Each player has one card. One card is a cat, one card is a mouse and the remaining cards are cheeses. The players take turns to draw any opponent’s card and look at it without showing it to the other players.

  • If the cat player draws the mouse card, the cards are revealed and the game ends. The cat player wins.
  • If the mouse player draws a cheese card or vice versa, the cards are revealed and the number of the cheese is crossed out. If all the cheeses are crossed out, the game ends. The cat player loses and all other players win.
  • If the game does not end, the player may return any one card without showing the other players which card that was returned.

Version History

  • 0.7: Rules for 2-4 players added, where the players have a tableau of face-down cards
  • 0.6: The secret revealed card must be a cheese to prevent outing the cat
  • 0.5: One secret card revealed to give more information and decisions each turn
  • 0.4: Drawn card always revealed to give more information and decisions each turn
  • 0.3: Both card revelation and card exchange optional
  • 0.2: Two mice instead of one (rejected)
  • 0.1: First draft

The complete rules are available in the PDF file to the right. In the following sections, I will describe how they came to be.

Implemented Rules

There are many ideas that came to live in Cheese Chase. On this page, I would like to present some of them and explain the reasoning behind them.

Optional revelation and exchange.

The optional revelation and exchange rules were added for one main reason: it must remain a secret where the mouse card goes to prevent the cat from immediately finding it. To enable this, the mouse player who finds a cheese MAY reveal the cards to prove that the mouse has found a cheese and MAY afterwards exchange the mouse card with the cheese card. This gives the player more agency as they may choose when to play risky (focus on finding cards) and when to play safely (focus on hiding the mouse).

Mandatory revelation

The mandatory revelation of one cheese was added to give the players more (but not too much) information. It also made the decisions of the already found cheeses more interesting, as they now may signal to the mouse and unfound cheese players where not to look.

The restriction that players may not reveal the mouse or the cheese was necessary to keep those cards secret. This is particularly important for the cat, since a player would otherwise be able to reveal the cat and (obviously) exchange it to an unlucky player, who in turn would be avoided by the other players. As a side effect, a mouse who accidentally finds the cat can no longer cheat and pretend nothing happened, since she won't have any cheese to reveal.

Rules (Video)



Rules (PDF)



... and Rejected Rules

Two mice

The rule of two mice (both of which the cat must find to win) were tested as one mean to make the game easier for the mice. However, it would make it too easy to find the first mouse by chance, after which it would be as difficult as before for the second mouse to remain hidden. The rule was quickly abandoned in favor of the optional revelation and exchange rule above.