2011/2 Best Children’s Game

Boardgames Australia congratulates the designers of the following games, which have been shortlisted for the Best Children’s Game Award, 2011. Award timing changed to June, so this award in 2012 was for games from 2011 and 2012.

The winner of the Best Children’s Game was announced at the Toy & Game Expo in Sydney, June 2012.

You can find out which game it was here!

Beep!Beep!

This is a fast paced card game where pattern matching skills and fast reflexes determine the winner. Players are driving cars – represented by flipping cards – through a forest and must move quickly to avoid wildlife, by matching either the colour of the cards or the animal type with the pile in front of them and claiming it before others get a chance to do so. If three of the same colour or animal appear on the road, players must race to hit the squeaky red car that gives this simple yet hilarious game its name! The winner is person who saves the most animals.

Harry Potter Hogwarts

Hogwarts is a race game with a difference in which players are pupils at the famous school of witchcraft and wizardry who compete to gather all their homework and return to their common rooms before the other players. In order to do so, players must navigate the shifting stairwells and secret passages – represented here by sliding tiles – while at the same time try to block other players from achieving their goal. As with other Lego games, children must first build the board and the rules contain suggestions for a number of interesting variants.

Nelly

Nelly is a beautifully produced game of dexterity and tactics that will appeal to all the family. Nelly is a hippopotamus who lives in a lake in Africa with her friends the turtles and a heron. The players are the turtles who like to spend their time sunning themselves on Nelly’s back while she eats plants, but sometimes it can get a little crowded and balancing there can be very challenging! If Nelly eats a plant with a crab underneath, she is pinched on the nose and submerges, sending all the turtles scurrying back to the shore. Sometimes Nelly eats a bad water plant and has to let off a little wind, making it even harder for turtles to find a place on her back! The player who first places all of his or her turtles successfully is the winner.

Vampires of the Night

This is a clever and engaging dexterity game that you can even play in the dark, thanks to the glow-in-the-dark playing pieces! The players help vampire Leo Longtooth to get rid of the garlic bulbs that have been spilled all over his castle. Using a magnetic bat wand, the players move Leo around the castle so that he can push the garlic out of the castle. But don’t drop the garlic into the crypt through one of the many holes in the castle floor! The player who gets rid of the most garlic bulbs is the winner.

Waterlily

Water Lily is a short, clever race game of hidden identity, memory and bluffing in which players are frogs hoping to be wed to the beautiful Princess Water Lily.

Each player is assigned frogs of a particular colour that is unknown to their fellow players. Then players take turns sending any frog zigzagging across the pond towards a series of hidden ramps that lie on the far shore. When a frog arrives at the shore, it slides down a ramp to the hidden scoring track. In a great twist, players who arrive too early only receive a few points and those who arrive too late none at all!