Jolly Octopus
BGG rank
BGG #29,439
BGG rating
4.7

Jolly Octopus

2010

Rules assistance for Jolly Octopus

Plain-language explanations of turns, card effects and disputed situations, with official source references and saved question history.

  • 2–5 players
  • 10 min
  • 4+
  • Complexity 1.0/5

Rules assistant for Jolly Octopus

What would you like to know?

Answers come from the official rulebook, with the page to check.

Jolly Octopus is a board game released in 2010 for 2–5 players, 10 minutes per game, and ages 4 and up. It was designed by Big Ideas Product Development Ltd..

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About the game

Jolly Octopus likes to hang out with his colorful crab friends. While they may not be the same species as him, they come from a common background, from a shared point-of-view as to how they exist and survive in the ocean - and over the years Jolly Octopus ("Jolly O" to his friends) has come to be quite protective of his little crab buddies, so much so that he causes trouble for anyone who aims to harvest crabs from the ocean like so much wheat and reduce them to nothing more than meaty butter-slathered claws on the dinner plate of some would-be "gourmand". Thus your job as a crab hunter extraordinaire in Jolly Octopus will require you to carefully extricate your target crabs from Jolly O's protection without brushing his legs and tickling him, for if you do, you can expect to get away with no crabs at the least and a menacing faceful of suckers at the worst. Two speed settings on Jolly O – fast and really, really fast – give you two ways to challenge your crab-plucking skills. The first player to retrieve all of her crabs from the safety of Jolly O's squishy bosom wins!

Questions and answers

Jolly Octopus supports 2–5 players according to the catalogue. This range comes from the publisher’s listed player count, so the game can be set up for any group size within it. Some setups, rules and scoring details may still vary by player count, so check your edition’s rulebook for the exact configuration.