In Pyjamaparty players are little vampires who are flitting from bed to bed at night instead of sleeping. Yes, you might think that vampires should be roaming the halls late at night, but junior vampires need their sleep as much as non-vampiric youngsters.

To set up the game, each player places her bed tile next to the rug on the game board of the same color, then places her pawn on a rug that is not her own color. Someone shuffles the six garlic cards and places them face-down on the game board, then players mix the spider and orange juice drink tokens face-down, place them on the game board, then draw one at random and place them on their bed.

On a turn, a player rolls the die. If she rolls a number, she moves that many spaces clockwise or counter-clockwise on the rugs on the edge of the game board. If she lands on an empty space, her turn ends. If one or more players are already on that rug, she chooses one of them, then draws a face-down token and places it before her without looking at it. The chosen player draws and reveals another token. Each player then makes what they think is the appropriate noise for these two items hitting one another: "clink" if two glasses, "oomph" if two spiders, and "splash" if one of each. The active player reveals the hidden token: If both players were correct, they each claim one token and place it on their bed; if only one player was correct, she claims both tokens; and if no one was right, the tokens are placed face-down on the board again.

If the player rolls a garlic bulb, everyone screams "Garlic!" then tries to get in bed because their screaming probably roused Dad, who will be annoyed to find them out of bed. Here's how this works: The active player reveals the top garlic card. If it shows a closed trap door, then each player moves one rug toward their bed (or onto their bed if they are already on their rug). If all vampires are in bed, stop turning over cards; if not, turn another card. If Dad shows up on one of the cards, every vampire out of bed loses an item while vampires in bed may take an item as a reward.

When a player has eight items on bed, players hold a garlic round. If this player reaches bed before Dad arrives, she wins; if not, she loses an item and the game continues. Note that one or more players can receive their eighth item as a bonus at the end of a garlic round. In this case, these players immediately win as they're already in bed!

Games