How To Play Outfoxed

Outfoxed is a co-operative game for 2-4 players in which you will be using your powers of deduction to work out which fox has stolen the pie! There are a number of suspects but can you work together to successfully identify the culprit. This is a game designed and aimed at children, teaching them to work together, apply simple strategies and use deduction so that you all collectively win or lose. This game is aimed at children 5 and over, although we’ve had a lot of success playing this numerous times with our 4 year old.

Each player takes the role of an investigator working together to try and find out which of the possible suspect foxes has stolen the pie before the fox reaches the end of the board and skips town. Set up involved shuffling the possible thief cards and placing one into the special clue decoder, along with placing all the possible suspect cards around the board.

Setup

Begin by placing all of the 16 potential suspect foxes around the edge of the board and a player piece shaped like a detective hat for each player in the centre of the board. Place the fox on the start space, which is a fox icon and then flip over 2 random suspects who may be the culprit. Shuffle the 16 thief cards without looking and place one of them in the decoder placing the rest back in the box. Stack the clue markers next to the board ready to be revealed.

How to play

The player who most recently ate pie goes first, although in our house we usually say the youngest player goes first. On your turn, you take the three dice, and declare if you are going for clues or suspects, before rolling the dice. Once you’ve rolled, you can take any dice that match the side you’ve called aside before trying up to two more times to get a complete set of three matching clues or suspect icons.

If you’ve gone for clues, count the number of clue markers on the dice, and you can move that number of spaces orthogonally (up, down, left or right but not diagonally). If you land in a paw print space you may take a clue from the clue pile and place it into the decoder, when you slide the decoder and the gap in the clue turns red to mean the thief is wearing the item on the clue. If not the item is not worn by the thief (some versions have a green for a negative, and some have a blank). You then close the slider and place the clue marker face up on the space where you took the clue from thus covering the paw space to stop you being able to search there again. If you were successful you can examine any revealed suspects, eliminating any that you know are not wearing one of the clues if a red marker was revealed.

The second option is going for suspects, here you are looking to roll three fox tails on dice, and if you do you are able to reveal two new suspects from around the edge of the board. If you fail to roll three dice the same on your three rolls for either suspects or clues, the fox moves forward three spaces and your turn is over.