2010 Best Children’s Game

The Judging Panel for the Best Children’s Game congratulates the designers of the following games, which have been shortlisted for the Best Children’s Game Award.

The 2009 Best Children’s Game award was won by The Kids of Carcassonne.

The Kids of Carcassonne

This is a beautifully produced game that can be enjoyed by young and old. It offers the joy of building the board like a jigsaw by placing square tiles together, but the tile design is very clever so that every edge matches. Each tile shows some roads and some people in different coloured clothes. You’ll be playing one of these colours, and when one of the roads is closed off so that it terminates at houses or a river, then you put one of your wooden
figures on each matching person on that road.

The trick is to try and get others to help you by creating long roads that you both share. The game ends when someone has all their wooden figures on the board and they are the winner!

There is no maths, it is definitely suitable from ages 4 upwards, but offers a little bit of strategy to engage the rest of the family, and lovely illustrated tiles to engage the littlest ones.

Go Nuts!

This is a zany dice game where everyone needs to stay alert. The squirrels are trying to hoard nuts, shown as acorns on one side of the die; the other faces show squirrels or a car. You begin with 5 dice and roll them – every acorn is worth a point, every car is a die that you can’t use again. You can keep rolling as long as you like, trying to get more and more acorns, and can stop and “bank” your points after any roll.

However if you press on and roll only cars, your turn ends with no points; while if you roll only squirrels, then everyone yells “Go Nuts!”. Every other player now picks up their special die and starts rolling madly trying to get a dog – at which time they say “woof”. In the meanwhile you roll those squirrel dice trying to get acorns as fast as you can. As soon as each other player has said “woof” the frantic acorn collecting ends.

Go Nuts features some addition, a bit of risk assessment and a lot of fun! This works best with children who can count and add small numbers to a total of 20 – we felt this was around age 7.

Magic Labyrinth

Everyone is racing their way through an invisible magical labyrinth. Your wizard, like all the others, wants to be first to reach a magic symbol printed on the floor of the labyrinth. unfortunately, as soon as you bump into an invisible wall you must go back to your starting position. The invisible walls are under the board and cause a magnetically-attached marble to detach from your wizard, creating a ‘thump’ that tells everyone that you have hit a wall. As the game progresses, the players build a mental map of the invisible walls and can navigate around the maze more easily. The maze can be completely reset each time you play so there is no problem with someone learning the perfect route. Good from about age 6 upwards, as although younger ones will have fun, they won’t be able to understand and recall where the walls are without help.

Minotaurus

Up to 4 players compete to race their heroes into the middle of the Labyrinth while dodging the minotaur. This is a maze game where the roll of the die may allow one of your knights to move, or it might allow you to reorganize the maze to slow your opponents, or even to send the fearsome minotaur after them. The lego contruction involved is not elaborate, and the most useful piece is probably the large base plate. The game however is a pleasing mix of tactics, luck and ganging up on the leading player. The rules also offer several suggestions for other ways to play the game which will let you adjust this game to suit all tastes. We think 5 year olds with a bit of help will be fine playing this.

Ringo Flamingo

Great components and crazy mayhem equal a fun game. The board has plastic flamingos and crocodiles sticking out of it. Each player has a plastic boat filled with life preservers, which they will flick, using the boat, at the board. The idea is to ring the flamingos and avoid the crocs. Everyone shoots simultaneously filling the air with flying rings and laughter. No deep strategy, but great fun for all ages in a beautifully presented package.