May the force be with you if you play this game with 8 year-old boys, as I did. Okay, I was warned that one little friend was a Star Wars expert. The 12 mini-objects central to the game include Boba Fett’s helmet, Han Solo in carbonite, Darth Vader’s head, the Millennium Falcon and more as players roll the objects onto the table for closer examination to win points. It’s a game of quick spacial orientation recognition as kids flip over a card with 4 objects pictured in various positions-on its side, upside down or turned over (not direction they are facing). If you see a match between one of the objects and those pictured on your card you can be quick to grab a colored light saber matching the background of the object’s picture OR be patient and scan all 4 objects for 3 matches, grab the “3” marker and triple your score for that turn. It took a few turns for kids to learn to grab the markers that matched and not the objects themselves, because the players were so excited. There was lots of fast paced discussion about whether players’ matches were correct as it takes some thinking to get it right! What surprised me was the time the boys took to put the game away, matching each detailed object to the molded packaging, like a complex puzzle, discussing the different characters and what they did in different episodes. I’m always looking for the language in games, so was pleased to see it even in clean-up time.
Available at Wonder Forge. Click here
