There was tremendous variety among the games short-listed for the Boardgames Australia's Best Children's Game 2010.  There was dice rolling, flipping of rings, mazes in lego and of magic; but the overall winner allowed the whole family from ages 4 to 100 to enjoy building a town together while competing to be the first to get all of their children onto the board. Kids of Carcassonne is a beautiful game: it's design is simple, friendly and engaging, in both the game play and in the look of the components.

Designed by Marco Teubner, following in the footsteps of Klaus Jurgen Wrede, The Kids of Carcassonne is a new game for everyone in the family, inspired by the  immensely popular game, Carcassonne, which is listed is in our Essential Game Library.  This game is much simpler than the parent: for a start, all tiles edges will match-up, so placing a piece correctly is very much easier. There is also no maths needed for scoring in this game: whenever a road is completed by terminating at a house or river, then the players cover up each child drawn on the road with pieces of the matching colour. The person who first gets there eight children onto the board is the winner.

The game involves a small element of strategy in joining up with others to try and close roads off more quickly. There is luck in the order in which the tiles come out, and so everyone has some chance of winning.

The tiles are large and chunky cardboard with beautiful illustrations of children herding sheep and chickens through the streets of the town. The child pieces that each player must put on the board are well-crafted, large solid woodedn figures that are easy for little hands to handle.

Overall The Kids of Carcassonne is a short and really enjoyable game for everyone, and perhaps and eye-opener to the world of Carcassonne for families who have never seen any of these great games.