How many players do you need for Herd Mentality?

You need at least four, and the brand says the game works with up to twenty players. Everyone answers on their own notepad, so the group can grow without changing the rules.

How do you win a game?

On each question, the players who gave the most common answer receive a cow token. The first to collect eight wins, according to the brand. The player who gave an answer that nobody else gave receives the pink cow and cannot win for as long as they keep it.

How long does a game last, and from what age?

The brand states 20 to 30 minutes. The recommended age, printed on the box, is 10 and up.

What is in the box, and are there expansions?

According to the brand, the box holds 200 questions, 62 cow tokens, 2 answer pads, a foam cow, an enclosure and a rules sheet. A pack of 200 extra questions, a Christmas expansion of 100 questions, the Moosic & Moovies edition and a digital version for the big screen complete the range.

Herd Mentality: the game where you have to think like the table

Everyone secretly writes down an answer to an everyday question: those who join the majority win a cow, and the only one to think differently inherits the pink cow. For 4 to 20 players, ages 10 and up.

By Laurent — 2026-10-02 · 4 min read

Five people of all ages sitting around a round coffee table: a young woman reads a card, and the cow-patterned box, the pink cow in its enclosure and notepads sit on the table. — Photo: Big Potato Games

What it is

Herd Mentality is a board game from Big Potato Games, a British publisher based in London. One person reads out a question, for example “Name the best sauce”, then everyone secretly writes their answer on a notepad and all of them are revealed at the same time. The aim is not to give the right answer, but the one most people will have chosen. The authors, Dan Penn and Rich Coombes, are named on the box, and the game came out in 2020, according to Wikipedia.

The game is played with four people or more and, according to the brand, up to twenty. The recommended age, printed on the box, is ten and up. The brand sums up its rules in three steps: read a question, write down your answer, then count the cows.

Why it exists

The brand defends a simple principle: in most party games, you measure yourself against the others; here, you are rewarded for thinking like them. It presents Herd Mentality as a game that children, teenagers and grandparents can play together, with no prior knowledge and no need to read quickly: there is no right answer to find, only the one that comes closest to the group’s view. A game also brings out what you think you know about those close to you, since the same question never produces the same answers from one group to the next.

A hand holds out the little pink foam cow to a player, in front of a smiling man in a red shirt and a laughing young woman, sitting on a sofa. — Photo: Big Potato Games

What matters

Everything rests on the count. When an answer is the most common, everyone who gave it receives a cow token. The first to collect eight wins the game, the brand says. When a player is alone in having given their answer, they receive the pink cow, a small foam token: for as long as they keep it, they cannot win, and they have to wait for another player to give an isolated answer to get rid of it.

According to the brand, the box contains 200 questions, 62 cow tokens, two answer pads, a foam cow, an enclosure to store it in and a rules sheet. The brand adds that the rules can be explained in about thirty seconds. The questions are open (“Name a very cold country”) or multiple choice (“Which is better: Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney Plus?”): both forms are described by the German outlet Spielpunkt, which reviews the German edition of the game.

The brand states that replay value comes from the players more than from the cards: the same question gets different answers depending on who is at the table. It nevertheless offers ways to extend it: a pack of 200 extra questions, a Christmas expansion of 100 festive questions, the standalone Moosic & Moovies edition and a digital version to play on the big screen.

A player sitting on a turquoise sofa bursts out laughing and high-fives another player, the pink cow and a notepad lying on the table in front of them. — Photo: Big Potato Games

Day to day

You need a group of at least four people, pencils and a little room on the table: answers are written on the pads supplied. One person reads the questions aloud, everyone writes, then the answers are read out in turn. Spielpunkt notes that you can “moo” to hurry along a player who hesitates, a detail the outlet finds amusing.

The brand states a length of 20 to 30 minutes. It adds that the rounds are short enough to play one after another, and it presents the game as suited to a group of four as much as to a large family. On the critics’ side, the Guardian, cited by Wikipedia, describes a light game that teaches a lot about one another’s tastes; Polygon, also cited by Wikipedia, praises the pleasure of discovering how everyone approaches the questions.

The Herd Mentality box, with its black and white cow pattern, beside the little pink foam cow with a stern expression, chewing on a tuft of grass. — Photo: Big Potato Games

Technical specifications

Feature	Value
Publisher	Big Potato Games (London)
Authors	Dan Penn and Rich Coombes (credited on the box)
Release	2020 (Wikipedia)
Players	4 to 20
Recommended age	10 and up (box)
Length of a game	20 to 30 minutes (according to the brand)
Aim	First to eight cow tokens
Box contents	200 questions, 62 cow tokens, 2 answer pads, 1 foam cow, 1 enclosure, 1 rules sheet
Language of the base edition	English
German edition	Herdentier
Expansions	Pack of 200 questions, Christmas expansion (100 questions), Moosic & Moovies

What the brand says

Big Potato Games states that Herd Mentality is a family game that is easy to learn and rewards collective thinking rather than rivalry. It says it has sold more than a million copies and cites, among its awards, the 2023 Astra Play Award in the general category. It describes the game as accessible to mixed age groups and to people who have never met, and offers to extend it with expansions rather than replace it.

For readers in Switzerland

A German edition exists, under the title Herdentier: the brand shows the German box in its gallery (“4-20 Spieler”, ages 10 and up), and the outlet Spielpunkt reviews the game, for four to twenty people from the age of ten, with a game lasting about twenty minutes. The base edition is otherwise played in English.

Why it caught our eye

We spotted it for the simplicity of its idea: a question, an answer written in secret, and the pleasure of finding out how other people think. We also like the pink cow, the foam token that gives the game its face, and the thought that a round can bring children from ten and grandparents together without effort.

Exactly the kind of brand we’d love to come across on O!deal one day.

A player sitting on a turquoise sofa bursts out laughing and high-fives another player, around a table where the little pink cow from the game Herd Mentality can be seen.

The brand behind this productBig Potato Games: the London publisher of games that make the table laughFounded in London in 2014 by three friends, Big Potato Games publishes The Chameleon, Herd Mentality and some sixty other board and party games, played in more than forty countries.Read the Big Potato Games profile →

Big Potato Games

SourcesBig Potato Games (new tab) · BoardGameWire (new tab) · Wikipédia (new tab) · Spielpunkt (new tab)

Frequently asked questions

How many players do you need for Herd Mentality?: You need at least four, and the brand says the game works with up to twenty players. Everyone answers on their own notepad, so the group can grow without changing the rules.
How do you win a game?: On each question, the players who gave the most common answer receive a cow token. The first to collect eight wins, according to the brand. The player who gave an answer that nobody else gave receives the pink cow and cannot win for as long as they keep it.
How long does a game last, and from what age?: The brand states 20 to 30 minutes. The recommended age, printed on the box, is 10 and up.
What is in the box, and are there expansions?: According to the brand, the box holds 200 questions, 62 cow tokens, 2 answer pads, a foam cow, an enclosure and a rules sheet. A pack of 200 extra questions, a Christmas expansion of 100 questions, the Moosic & Moovies edition and a digital version for the big screen complete the range.

Also worth reading

O!radarPiecework Puzzles
Poolside Gossip: the 1,000-piece jigsaw taken from a Slim Aarons photograph
Published on 2026-10-02
A 1,000-piece jigsaw taken from the Slim Aarons photograph, licensed by Getty Images and supplied in a box with yellow cabana stripes. Once assembled, it measures 48.9 × 67.6 cm.
O!radarHyper Super
Vevey's fork sculpture, printed on a page of history
Published on 2026-09-27
A century-old encyclopaedia page becomes the canvas for a one-off poster, made at Hyper Super's workshop in Vaud.
O!radarIntuitive Instruments
dualo du-touch S: a keyboard, sampler and looper packed into one small case
Published on 2026-09-27
The dualo du-touch S combines a velocity-sensitive keyboard, a built-in sampler and a live looper in a 0.6 kg case, with four selectable note layouts and up to 18 loops per track.