Who Soiled the Toilet? is your next party game (about pooping on the floor)

The Japanese have a reputation for appreciating the toilet. The poop emoji is a creation of theirs, as is Everyone Poops—that famous kids book you almost certainly read as a young 'un—while their TV comedies have a reputation for going heavy on the ordure. Japan is also the home of those space-age lavatories with heated seats and two dozen bidet settings, and it's the birthplace of this appetizing dessert treat.

So no one should be surprised that, as we toured last October's Essen gaming fair, the largest board games show on earth, our eyes were caught by a Japanese game called Toire o Yogoshita nowa Dareda? (Or, in English, Who Soiled the Toilet?). Naturally, we had to try it.

This is a bluffing game, pitching two teams—the Clean Freaks and the Dirty Devils—against each other in a battle of wits to keep a restroom clean... or to dirty it all up in secret.

The first thing you notice is the game’s singular art style. The box itself is a flat cylinder, drawn like a toilet—a fact which will become important in due course. The rest of the components, a bundle of cards and (poop) chips, comes packaged in, well, a great big wad of what we’re assuming is authentic Japanese toilet tissue. The cards are charmingly if scratchily illustrated in an old-school manga style, with the chips an especially evocative shade of brown.

The story, such as it is, revolves around a new breed of person stalking the land, inconsiderate with their bowel movements. “Actually,” reads the game’s explainer, “it’s not just that they don’t possess the thoughtful soul, but the fact is they are a crazy breed who truly revel in creating filth, while acting like they are just normal clean people, so they can fit in at the party. It’s not ideal, but let’s all pitch in and help maintain the condition of the toilet until the party finishes!"

The game plays a lot like classic social deduction game The Resistance, though without the portentously nerdy art. (Those with a Board Game Geek account can download a copy of the English rules here.) The Clean Freaks are noble sorts wearing dapper frock coats and top hats, or else they are well-behaved children who absolutely eat up their vegetables. The Dirty Devils are naughty sorts who evidently do not care at all what becomes of their waste. One of them wears a poop hat, not a totally unheard of fashion statement in Japan. 

Weirdly, all three Dirty Devils look a little like the British royal family during a bender that has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

"Sometimes you want to unwind with a party game about deliberately defecating on the floor, you know?"

In each round, the "leader" nominates a certain number of other players to leave the table one by one and in a particular order to "answer the call of nature." Other players than vote to accept or reject these choices. (After all, the leader might be one of the Dirty Devils!) The selected players then go off to another room—the game suggests using your actual bathroom—and check the condition of a toilet card. It begins clean side up, but Dirty Devils have the option of flipping it over to "dirty." The secret team of phantom poopers—who know each others’ identity throughout—have to make a mess without getting caught, so they can't be too obvious about when they do this.

If the toilet is clean at the end of a round, the Clean Freaks score a point; if not, the Dirty Devils take one. The first team to three wins.

This isn't just a reskin of The Resistance, however. There’s also an action round in Who Soiled the Toilet?, and it adds a dexterity component to the proceedings. Everyone gets to take a turn flipping their nut-brown poo chips at the box lid.

The Clean Freaks, of course, want to get their waste in the bowl because that is the essence of their nature. But Dirty Devils want to look like they want their waste in the bowl, so they must try to miss the pot "accidentally." They may even try to knock other people's poop tokens off the throne. After a couple of beers and a few punishing mind games during earlier rounds, this extra dexterity element is extremely funny—and surprisingly difficult—but it’s probably not of a depth to inspire tournament play.

So it's all a bit different, and the theme is absolutely what makes the game. I cast no shade on its illustrious predecessor; there’s absolutely a time and a place for sci-fi ninja women wearing cybernetic pleather push-up bras—but sometimes you want to unwind with a party game about deliberately defecating on the floor, you know?

Who Soiled the Toilet? is for people with friends who might be down for a fun bluffing game but are turned off by pictures of futuristic aristocrats in weird space gowns. Poop is inherently hilarious, and there's a certain impish innocence to the humor here that makes a game about dropping your guts even funnier. And that's totally fine—not every board game has to be the next cardboard Citizen Kane.