Sell Me a Sasquatch – the bluffing card game where your friends try to scam you

Every family has one person who would sell you a used car with no engine and a big smile.

Sell Me a Sasquatch gives that person a job. It’s a bluffing card game from Exploding Kittens and NPR’s Planet Money, where everyone offers the buyer a deal of three cards and the buyer only gets to see one of them. Good creatures score points. Loan sharks and Trojan horses ruin your evening.

I love that a podcast about economics made a party game about scamming your friends. That’s the most honest economics lesson I can think of.

What is Sell Me a Sasquatch?

It’s a card game for 2 to 6 players, ages 10 and up, and a round takes about 20 minutes. The box holds 120 cards, 28 point tokens, six “This Is My Deal” playmats and one Buyer Squatch, a cardboard Bigfoot that marks whose turn it is to shop.

The idea comes from a real paper. Planet Money says the game is loosely based on George Akerlof’s 1970 paper “The Market for Lemons”, about what happens when the seller knows a lot more than the buyer. In January 2026 the show asked listeners to send in creature ideas with a money twist. So the deck has The Laffer (a laughing hyena, after the Laffer curve), Scabby (the inflatable rat from union picket lines), The Veblen (a show-off peacock) and the BullBear, one creature that can’t decide how it feels about the stock market.

Exploding Kittens put it in stores on July 19, 2026, at Target, Walmart, Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

How does it work?

The player holding the Buyer Squatch is the buyer. Everyone else picks three cards from their hand and lays them face down on their playmat. Then each seller flips one card face up. That’s the teaser.

The buyer picks one deal and takes all three cards into their collection, the hidden ones too. The seller whose deal got picked becomes the next buyer.

Creatures come in sets. Four tiny ones, three medium ones, two big ones or one giant creature earns you a point token. Nasties work the other way. Collect a pair of Loan Sharks and the new buyer can steal up to two cards from your collection. Three Trojan Horses and they take a point token. Thingamabobs are special cards that let you peek at an extra card or remove one from a rival’s deal. First to four tokens wins with 3 or 4 players, five tokens with 5 or 6. There’s a separate two-player mode too.

The good and the not-so-good

The good:

• Every turn has a little drama, because nobody knows the full deal until it’s too late.
• The rules fit on one sheet, and the box tells you to watch the video instead of reading them. Fair.
• It’s small and cheap enough to be a stocking stuffer for the adults.

The not-so-good:

• A few Amazon reviewers say the first game is a bit confusing. The difference between your hand and your collection trips people up.
• One reviewer thinks it plays best with three or more. Two players works, but you lose the table full of liars.

Who is Sell Me a Sasquatch for?

Planet Money listeners, obviously. Also families with teenagers. Early Amazon buyers keep saying their teens and the parents both wanted a second round, which is rare for any game. Average rating at the time of writing: 4.8 stars from about 150 ratings.

If you want a co-op game where nobody gets betrayed, skip this one and look at Bomb Busters or The Gang. For more picks, see our gifts for board game lovers.

Where can I buy Sell Me a Sasquatch?

Amazon sells it from the Exploding Kittens store. It was about 15 bucks at the time of writing (October 2026), down from the 20-dollar list price. Target, Walmart and Barnes & Noble have it too.

Trust me, this is a great deal. (That’s exactly what a seller would say.)