Thrift Treasure: Even Steven’s Odd! Game
Part luck, part speed. Even Steven’s Odd! is a dice game we found (twice) at thrift. Should you keep an eye out for it?
Exactly a month ago we found the game of Skippity at our local Goodwill. Then ran into another copy a few days later in Iowa City when we were visiting our oldest daughter at college. It wasn’t the first time we’d encountered a game we had never seen on back-to-back occasions. As it turns out, it wouldn’t be the last either.
During the same trip when we purchased Skippity, we also added an almost new copy of Even Steven’s Odd! to our basket. We almost passed on it at first because we couldn’t locate the rules to verify the contents. After searching the shelves, in case it had fallen out, we discovered the simple instructions we printed on the inside of the box lid! Coincidentally, another copy of this exact same game was at the exact same store where we found the duplicate Skippity. So weird.
Even Steven’s Odd! is a real-time dice rolling game for up to four players. Each person takes a color-coded dice holder, three dice of the same color and three white dice. The deck of cards is shuffled and placed face-down in the middle of the playing area along with a Funko Pop! sized dice-headed character named “Steven”.
One person is chosen as the start player, who turns over the top card of the deck and reads it aloud. At the same time, all players roll their dice (and reroll as many times as they wish). Each time you may lock in your dice by putting them in the holder. Any you don’t lock you must reroll. Once placed in the holder, they must remain there.
The first player to complete the challenge on the card AND grab the Steven figure wins the round. They take the card to show their success and draw a new card, starting the next round.
A game of Even Steven’s Odd! is played over ten rounds and the player with the most collected cards at the end of the game is the winner. There are no official tie-breaker rules. We elected to play additional rounds until one person pulled ahead.
You can find new copies of Even Steven’s Odd! on Amazon for under $15. It also is the same game as Dice of Fury by the same company. The latter is a little more expensive but includes twice the number of challenge cards and rules which require you to play to ten points, instead of the highest out of ten. For the price savings I’d stick with the smaller version. Or do like we did and search for a copy (or two) at thrift!
Do you prefer longer or shorter games?
