If you threw the bluffing game Sheriff of Nottingham into a pot with Sushi Go! and stirred them around, you’d get Honeypot—a set collection game with a bit of push-your-luck bluffing.
Honeypot was not a game I would have picked up on its own, but because my family is already familiar with those mechanics and genuinely enjoys them, I thought it was worth a shot to expand our table rotation.
Gameplay Overview:
Honeypot is a light set-collection card game for 1 to 6 players that plays in about 20 to 30 minutes.
Each round, every player simultaneously draws a hand of six cards from the main deck. You then arrange those cards in whatever order you choose inside your secret cache folder before passing it face-down to your neighbor. You are trying to trick them into taking negative points or cards that would be useless to them.
On your turn, you open the folder passed to you and flip over the top pair of cards. You have a choice: keep that pair for your collection, or discard them to flip the next pair. If you discard the second pair too, you’re forced to take whatever is in the final pair at the bottom.
If a player decides to keep a pair early and leaves cards behind in the folder, opponents can spend a “Swiping Token” to jump in and take the remaining cards in that folder for themselves. Once all folders are resolved, players score points based on completed sets, bonus tiles, and avoiding negative intel cards.
The game ends after five rounds.
Game Experience:
No one was super excited to play Honeypot when we first sat down, but after a couple of rounds, as the lights went on and everyone could see how they could bluff their opponents, smiles started to light up around the table. My 19-year-old son was grinning as he tried to outwit me into taking terrible cards, and my 11-year-old daughter, who originally had zero interest, suddenly declared, “I like this game!” and ended up being able to outwit her brother into taking terrible cards.
Swiping is satisfying when you end up with great cards, and pulling off a good swipe can win you the game—though taking a bad swipe can just as easily lose it for you. In our plays, swiping usually happened later in the game because everyone only wanted to use their swipe tokens if they were losing.
There is a lot of randomness in Honeypot that you simply can’t control because your hands depend entirely on your card draws. But when you manage to trick your opponent into taking the worst pair of cards in the folder, it feels so good. Conversely, it feels just as bad when you get played yourself. There is certainly agency in choosing the order of your cards and deciding when to swipe or pass, but beyond that, you can play everything right and still lose to the luck of the draw.
Given that bluffing your opponent is such a critical part of the experience, I have no desire to try the included solo mode. I also wouldn’t recommend playing this game with two players. While the game does technically include a specific rule fix for 2-player swiping (spending a token lets you draw extra cards from your own current cache rather than taking from someone else), the core “swiping” mechanism is more effective with more players.
I played the game with 3 and 4 players, and both were good, but I believe the more players you have, the better it gets. Even with 4 players, the game moved quickly and wrapped up right around the 20-minute mark.
Everyone was engaged throughout all the games we played. When someone else is deliberating whether to take the pair of cards or not, you’ll find yourself thinking what you would do in their shoes. And with the opportunity to swipe their extra cards, you’ll pay attention every turn. In this way, there’s no downtime in the game.
One mechanical hiccup comes with the catch-up mechanism. The end-of-round bonus card that a trailing player can claim works well with fewer players but gets weaker as the player count gets higher. If two players are tied for last, neither gets the card, so the catch-up mechanism fails completely. Or, if you’re playing a 5- or 6-player game and the 5th and 6th place players are close in score, the 6th place player can easily leapfrog into 5th using the bonus—leaving the 5th place player behind with no help at all, causing them to fall even further out of reach.
The artwork serves as a nice, lighthearted backdrop to the gameplay, and while the included cache folder is a cool component, that and the secret-agent bear theme feel unnecessary.
Final Thoughts:
At the end of the day, Honeypot is a delightfully light family game that is easy to learn and doesn’t outstay its welcome. It’s not a game I’d want to bust out with my serious board game group as there are better bluffing games for them, but it’s one I’m happy to bring to the table with my family.
Because I came in with zero expectations, I was pleasantly surprised. If I had expected anything at all going into it, I suspect I would have been disappointed.
Final Score: 3 Stars – A cute, easy-to-learn bluffing game that doesn’t outstay its welcome.
Hits:
• Great artwork and lighthearted theme
• Easy to learn with fast setup and a snappy play time
• Fun, satisfying opportunities to be sneaky and outwit your opponents
Misses:
• Catch-up mechanism fails or feels uneven at higher player counts
• Your agency is heavily constrained by the luck of your card draws
• Gameplay can start to feel a bit rinse-and-repeat after a few plays
• No score sheet
