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برچسب: Treehouse

  • Spooky games for a scary time — The Treehouse

    Spooky games for a scary time — The Treehouse



    In Betrayal, players take on the role of characters exploring a spooky mansion. You begin the game in the entrance hall, comfortable in the knowledge that you’re all on the same side, and feeling ready for an adventure. The mansion slowly reveals its secrets as you explore, which (spolier alert) pretty much always include some truly daft architectural choices, given that the room tiles are drawn at random. Some rooms contain items (often useful stuff like weapons, etc), while others trigger creepy little events or, most excitingly, reveal omens. Each time an omen is appears, six dice are rolled, and if the total number that comes out is lower than the number of omens you’ve encountered so far… then it’s officially SPOOK TIME, because The Haunt is about to begin.

    This is the point at which Betrayal really comes into its own. The basic game comes with a book of 50 different scenarios which can trigger at this point. Which one you end up with is determined by the number on the omen card that tipped the balance, and which room it was found in (who’s to say a scary plot line can’t begin with a look-up table? Certainly not us!). The only thing the scenarios have in common is that they will pit one player (the traitor) against the rest. Who becomes the traitor is determined by the scenario, but whoever they are, they will now become the keeper of the Traitor’s Tome which will provide them with their new, secret win condition and let them know their new spooky powers.

    We’ve played a few games of Betrayal ourselves and had a LOT of discussions with people who’ve playing it at the Treehouse, and are always astonished at the variety of plot lines. Yes, some of them are better-designed from a gameplay point of view than others, but we’ve never been disappointed with the narrative that develops: this game has genuinely produced some of our favourite board game storylines. If you’re up for some super-nerdy viewing, check out this episode of Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop, which does a great job of demonstrating just how funny and unpredictable Betrayal can be!

    Pretty much the only downside to this game at the moment is that you do need at least three people to play it, and ideally 5-6 to experience it at it’s best. If you’re lucky enough to have the player count right now, we strongly recommend giving this one a go.



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  • what we’re playing now — The Treehouse

    what we’re playing now — The Treehouse



    Chella:

    “We are still enjoying online games with friends and family, including improvised Just One using pen and paper; a little rough and ready homemade web version of Telestrations coded by a friend; a phone-based version of Cards Against Humanity called All Bad Cards, and most of the Jackbox games (repeat faves are Quiplash, Drawful, Fibbage and Trivia Murder Party). We’ve also been meeting our friends in Board Game Arena to play Hanabi which is nice because they live in Hamburg.

    I’m lucky enough to be researching design fictions on my PhD so I’ve been able spend time playing some old and not so old text based adventures and narrative games (in the name of research!) on Steam and Itch.io, some of which I grabbed in the latter’s ‘Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality’ a while back.

    We’ve had a few breaks in play, but when we can get everyone together we continue roleplaying using Discord and Foundry Virtual Tabletop. We are about six sessions into the Enemy Within Campaign from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

    We’ve also recently discovered that Airbnb now offers online experience tours, so we can finally realise our literal board game name location challenge: we’ve been saving two bottles of Jaipur IPA so that we can play Jaipur while drinking Jaipur, and now we can have a complete date night of that plus an online tour of Jaipur, India!”

    Patrick:

    “In our house we’ve been enjoying online card games like Magic: the Gathering Arena and Legends of Runeterra. They’re not quite the same as sitting opposite an opponent to duke it out, but they both scratch a strategic itch! Magic in particular is in a good place right now, and it’s great to just drop a game or two over the course of an afternoon.”

    Then, last but very definitely not least… Ella:

    “I’ve been making board games into drinking games (Cobra Paw) and I’m going to make a huge Battleships board to put drinks on in place of ships, then if your opponent hits your boat you neck whatever drink is on that square 🤪”



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  • board games for Christmas — The Treehouse

    board games for Christmas — The Treehouse



    Slowly but surely we’re getting a clearer picture of what’s in store for us over the festive season at the end of this weirdest of years. It’s looking like getting family together around a table will be ‘a thing’ this year in our part of the world, but with pubs shut in a lot of places and household mingling still limited, Christmas merriment might still need a bit of a helping hand.

    That’s where (you guessed it) board games come in! Long a traditional component of Christmas for lots of families, board games have come a very long way over the past decade or so, and have never offered so many effective ways to get the fun started. Here’s our Christmas Games Guide 2020 to help you navigate these crowded waters and find the perfect family game for Christmas…



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  • Board games and (my) mental health — The Treehouse

    Board games and (my) mental health — The Treehouse



    At the moment, pretty much everyone in the world has got more than usual to deal with when it comes to mental health. Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve all had some learning to do on what it takes to keep ourselves sane when our usual routines are disrupted and many sources of enjoyment aren’t available to provide a pick-me-up, and that’s just those of us lucky enough to have avoided major trauma or bereavement.

    I suspect most regular board gamers would be willing to at least speculate that the hobby was doing their brains some good. It turns out there’s plenty of real life science to back this up, at least in certain areas (abstract strategy games and dementia, for example). I’m not qualified to say anything clever about the research, although a lot of it does ring true for me: this post is a reflection on how board gaming has helped my mental wellbeing over the past twelve months and why I think that is.

    This is a personal subject so I’ll introduce myself for a change: Hi, I’m Ruth. For the last three-and-a-bit years I’ve been running the Treehouse with my other half Andy. Unless stated otherwise it’s probably me writing the social media and blog posts and behind the camera taking the pictures. Things I’ve learned about my mental health in the last twelve months: being below a certain level of busy is bad for me; even small amounts of random chitchat with other humans is good for me; I’m still capable of experiencing boredom (genuinely a surprise); houseplants are so beneficial for my mood that it’s almost weird. Big things I miss: sitting round a table with family and friends; working with the rest of the Treehouse team. Small things I miss: the sound of the Treehouse full of people having fun; live music (this one might belong in ‘big things’ actually); PINTS.



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  • If board games be the food of love… — The Treehouse

    If board games be the food of love… — The Treehouse



    Connect psychically

    Maybe what you’re craving isn’t escapism at all, but a way to engage with each other on a deeper level. These (potentially dangerous!) games encourage you to get right into each other’s heads… who knows what surprises you’ll find there?

    A quick aside: both of the following games are really designed for larger groups, and I wouldn’t claim that two is the ideal player count for either. However, during lockdown we’ve all had to make our fun with what’s available, and we’ve had an enjoyable two-player time with both of these. Playing with just two makes them a lot less raucous and a little more intense, but arguably no less satisfying than the larger group version, and you’ll get to have a whole different type of fun with them once party days are here again!

    • Medium. The first game in this weird but potentially wonderful category is Medium, in which players become mind readers trying to pluck words straight out of each other’s brains (not as gross as it sounds!). Each of you begins with a hand of word cards, and you take turns starting each round by choosing one to play face-up in the middle of the table. Then, the other player follows with a card from their hand, ideally one that they think creates an obvious connection with the word already chosen. You both count down from three then say the word that you think most directly links the two cards. If you both said the same word, great! You just scored the maximum points for the round. If not, you repeat the process up to twice more using the words you just said instead of the words on the card. This super-simple game has some genuine magic to it, and never more so than when you can look each other in the eye and just KNOW that you’re thinking the same thing!

    • Wavelength. Ah, Wavelength. I’ve used a whole lot of words waxing lyrical about this phenomenal game since it became available to buy again recently, but I can always find a few more! Wavelength is remarkable in many ways: you can play it in team or cooperatively, by video link or in person, with a large group or with just two players. It’s simple to learn, has some of the coolest components around, and can get you thinking about things as strange and diverse as “who on the Treehouse team is the most Slytherin?”, “which colour does my sister think is the sexiest?” or “what is small but not tiny?”.

      The rules of Wavelength are simple: the player whose turn it is to be clue-giver draws a card which defines a scale, e.g. famous to infamous, pointy animal to round animal, or nice smell to disgusting smell, and tells the other players what it is. Then, they spin the Wavelength Wheel of Wonder* (*not its real name) and take a peak behind the snazzy turquoise screen to find out where on the scale the target has landed, without showing the other players. They then concoct their clue, which can be whatever they like as long as it’s not too complex, to help their team mates (or all other players in the cooperative version) to guess where the target is by adjusting the red needle. Once the decision is made, the screen slides back to show the answer, and points are awarded if the needle is within the target area. It might sound a little abstract without the game in front of you, but as soon as you’ve got to grips with the (literal) mechanics of the wheel, all will become clear!

      A small safety note to finish: with just two players, we’ve found that this game can go one of two ways: either you’re so wondrously in sync that you become increasingly thrilled at your collective cleverness, or… you’re so at odds that you begin to wonder how you’re even friends. In the event that you find yourself in the latter scenario, don’t panic – treat it as a conversation starter and explore how you got there, and you’re bound to find out something about each other that you didn’t know before!



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  • The Geek and I — The Treehouse

    The Geek and I — The Treehouse



    For those already familiar with the above, here are a couple of smaller things you might not have stumbled across yet:

    • Right up at the top of the entry above the game’s title, you can find ‘reimplements’/ ‘reimplemented by’ links, which make it easy to find earlier versions or sequels of the game you’re looking at.

    • On the right-hand side lower down the entry, there’s a grey box headed ‘classification’. In it you can find the game’s key mechanics and theme(s) listed. Clicking on them will take you to a selection of the highest-rated games which feature that mechanic/ theme – an easy way to explore other titles that share a characteristic you enjoy.

    • If you click into the search box in the top right of the screen, before you start typing you’ll see an ‘advanced search’ option appear in the drop down. Clicking on this unlocks a seriously powerful box of tricks. For example, if you know our username (“Treehouse Sheffield”) you can use this to filter The Treehouse’s collection by play time, player count, complexity, minimum age and even specific mechanics. What you’ll get back is a neat list of all the games in our library that meet your criteria, with the most highly-rated ones at the top. Nifty, huh?

    #2: One central hub

    According to its Wikipedia entry, way back in 2010 BGG was given an award for being “a resource without peer for board and card gamers, the recognized authority of this online community”. It feels to me like this has only become more true over time, which means that if you are a board game designer or a board game-related content producer, you are pretty much guaranteed to have a presence on the site. So, if you know how to find it, the BGG entry for a particular game acts as one central point for creators to post their YouTube reviews and ‘how to play’ videos, for fans to share their photos and rules summaries, and for the designer(s) of the game to answer questions and issue rules clarifications.

    “If you know how to find it” is a pretty big “if” though where BGG is concerned – it certainly took me a while to find my way around the myriad different aspects of each listing, and I’m sure there’s plenty more I haven’t discovered. The key to finding the sort of content described above turns out to be the horizontal menu just below the top banner. Here are some highlights:

    • Under ‘forums’ you can find discussion threads about the game, which can be filtered to show just rules questions, often with answers straight from the designer.

    • Under ‘videos’ you can find video content complete with user ratings that again can be easily filtered by language and type (reviews, instructional, interviews, even ‘humour’ specifically about that game… if you dare to go there!).

    • The stuff stored under ‘files’ can be particularly useful – there’s often a .pdf copy of the rule book, plus all kinds of helpful player aids and cheat sheets created by users (the Twilight Imperium 4th Edition files section contains 25 pages of listings!). Some of it might be poor quality, but as ever on BGG, users can (and do) rate the content that’s added so it’s easy to sort the wheat from the chaff.

    #3: A generally wholesome vibe

    Given what a powerful force BoardGameGeek has become in the tabletop gaming industry, I think it has done a pretty remarkable job of staying true to its community focus and creating a wholesome atmosphere.

    Something that stood out when I was delving into BGG’s history is that it’s still run by a surprisingly small team – just half a dozen or so people, with founder Scott Alden still at the helm. In interviews Alden talks about resisting calls from games production companies to step in when ratings on the site go south, with the exception of some back-end algorithms to stop people setting up accounts specifically to trash/ hype large numbers of games. He does also mention the impossibility of imposing any meaningful moderation on the site given the resources at his disposal, but I’ve seen very little unpleasantness between users either on the site itself or on its lively and supportive Facebook group.

    One aspect that I now see in a different light after watching the interviews is the user-friendliness of BGG. Alden repeatedly mentions that the question ‘what would I want from this site?’ is never far from his mind, which I must admit surprised me slightly given that usability has never been top of my list of BGG’s best qualities. It all makes more sense now that I know that BGG has mostly been coded by Alden himself plus one other programmer: you get the impression that adding extra functionality to enable shiny new content has tended to take priority over polishing the user interface. Progress has been made recently though, with the new homepage finally making its appearance late last year as part of a significant facelift slowly making its way across the vastness of the site.

    Another area where BoardGameGeek has recently made long-overdue progress is in the area of promoting diversity and inclusivity. The uncomfortable significance of the fact that the BGG logo was a white man right up until 2019 only dawned on me recently, but at least a change has now been made, and features like the recent series celebrating Black contributors for Black History Month provide hopeful signs that the changes are more than skin-deep.



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  • Help! I’m dating a gamesplainer! — The Treehouse

    Help! I’m dating a gamesplainer! — The Treehouse



    Hello, and welcome to The Treehouse’s new agony aunt column!

    I’m Chella, whom you may have met if you’ve visited The Treehouse before. It’s possible I taught you a party game, let you know that we had some corner brownies available in the cake display rack, or served you a Birdhouse Tea. 

    Now you can get to know another side of me as the arbiter of both real and theoretical board game conundrums (including whether or not there exists a board game called Conundrum – there are two!) and you can send in questions from the comfort of your own home.

    More on that later. For now, I will share with you my credentials… OK, I have no ‘official’ agony aunt credentials but I have worked at The Treehouse since our opening day, witnessed a lot of gaming and played plenty of board games myself (and with others!) and in that time I have helped solve many a game-related query.

    Those questions were answered in person though, and the answers drifted into the board game aether. Now, in these uncertain days as we get back to board gaming in person, we felt it worthwhile to archive future answers in the annals of gaming history as a community resource, talking point, and a bit of fun. Lofty ambitions? Probably. Over-egging the importance of this column? Almost definitely!

    But that’s sort of the theme of today’s column as I present to you our first question:

    Help! I’m dating a gamesplainer!

    Dear Treehouse team,

    Please help! I’ve started dating a perfectly decent guy. My family loves him, he is an upstanding citizen, and he is very cute. But, there is a problem. Whenever we play board games together, he has a habit of doing this thing where he goes into what I can only call “gamesplainer mode”. I am calling it this because it is quite different to the way a human person would naturally and casually explain the rules to a game.

    Instead, his normally jocular and mild-mannered tone morphs into something between a gameshow host, home shopping channel salesperson, and gladiator. Suddenly, winning and losing becomes a life-and-death struggle but, crucially, not understanding the rules or making a mistake when it is my turn suddenly feels like a crime.

    I love playing board games with him but I dread unboxing a new game or playing one he’s played before and I haven’t. He even does it at other people’s houses and I cringe inside when I see ‘the fear’ spreading to them. How can I tell him that he can just be himself while explaining again and we will still listen and learn the rules?

    Yours sincerely,

    Gamesplained in Greystones

    Dear Gamesplained in Greystones,

    Thank you for your excellent question.

    Firstly, I very much appreciate how you have differentiated between “game explainers” and “gamesplainers”. I think we can agree (and not just because it’s my favourite part of the job) that game explainers provide a valuable service in helping people get started on a new game quickly. Some folks are delighted by a twenty-eight-page rulebook, but others will take one look at that alongside the pile of stuff that came out of the box and be grateful that someone is willing to act as their lifeline. So just to be clear, we love a game explainer.

    But then there are the gamesplainers. Those who let the power of superior knowledge go to their heads. Those who enjoy explaining the game more than the players may ever enjoy eventually playing it, who dive in without checking whether people already know the rules, and may even carry on explaining what other players should do on their turns even once the game has begun, and, potentially, long after all of the guests have gone home.

    It’s easy enough to dismiss this as bombast, pomposity, or desperation to remain the focal point of the game night even at the expense of irritating or belittling fellow players. If that is what’s going on though, maybe gaming together should not be in your future. And if that’s a game changer (sorry), maybe it’s the relationship that’s not right. 

    But if you simply find yourself rolling your eyes or sighing as your partner shifts gears into gamesplainer mode, I invite you to see this from another perspective…

    From what I’ve witnessed, gamesplainers are most often simply game enthusiasts who allow their joy to spill over a little too freely (OK, sometimes freely enough to make me wish I were a gelatinous cube who could seep into the floor while hearing all about worker placement vs. tile placement, or fantasise about what I’d do if I really were Ursula or the Red Queen as an asymmetrical game is explained to me for the umpteenth time). But, for now, let’s assume your partner loves gaming so much that he nerds out, takes to an imagined game podium and gives the fantasy “Board Games Are Amazing And This One In Particular” lecture for the ages right there at the dining-room-table-turned-lecture-hall of his mind.



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  • travel games for UK holidays — The Treehouse

    travel games for UK holidays — The Treehouse



    It’s summer! And it’s actually been warm! Ridiculously warm! And sunny! Ridiculously sunny! You may have decided to venture outdoors, or even outside of Sheffield for holiday-related fun times over the coming weeks. But if you, dear readers, are anything like us here at the Treehouse, you will be incorporating games into your travel plans.

    Yes, I know this summer is different than most, and we can lament not being able to play Carcassonne in Carcassonne, play Santorini in Santorini, or the dream: play Jaipur in Jaipur while drinking a bottle of Thornbridge Jaipur IPA (this may just be my dream). But we are big fans of making our own fun, and so here is a roundup of games for holidays and it goes out to our tribe whom we know will play them rain or shine, Near and Far (available in our library). Read on for a round up of travel games for everyone. 

    Beach (and rain!) proof games

    We are an island nation, and although Sheffield may not have a coastline, we’re surrounded by water (sometimes more than we would like!). I am a beach girl and wild swimmer at heart, so this first group of games is for anyone who’ll be out on the water, or relaxing in the sand, games in tow. Some of these games fit into other categories below, but I wanted to give a special mention to games that are easy to clean and conveniently play well near sand, water and even ice lollies.

    • Blokus: This colourful abstract strategy game looks like a very cool analogue version of Tetris but the goal is to fill up the board, not empty it. It can be played by up to four players but works well as a two player game and even has a variation that allows for solitaire mode. Without any text it is easy for kids to pick up and for multilingual groups to play. It’s not necessarily travel sized in the traditional sense but the box is flat and very easy to slip into a suitcase or car boot. I should mention there are some small bits involved, but nothing that a picnic blanket couldn’t contain, and the plastic pieces and board are easy to clean.

    • Bananagrams: This Scrabble free-for-all only requires a flat surface to play and each player races to complete their own crossword-style grid in front of them using only the letters they’ve picked up. You can play it alone or up to a group of eight, but eight can get kind of frantic. It’s most enjoyable for two to five players in my experience. And it comes in a cute little fabric banana bag. The whole thing is sand-proof and washable.

    • Cobra Paw: Cobra Paw has a cardboard box, which will admittedly get a bit battered the further it strays from your admirably arranged board game shelf. You can accept this hazard, or store the components in a travel bag… or even do as some friends of mine have done and create a special travel box that helps you both store the pieces more compactly, and immediately see if one is missing so that you don’t leave the campsite without it. Cobra Paw is a very speedy matching game for two to six players requiring quick reflexes and good observational skills. It relies on rolling dice and matching symbols on domino shapes and has the extra competitive mechanic of stealing pieces from other players if they are not quick enough to defend them. It is suitable for both adults and kids to enjoy, as long as neither are tantrum-prone when they’re not winning!

    • Qwirkle: This one comes in a big-ish box, but don’t be discouraged. Inside the box is a bag of tiles and you can easily take it on holiday with you in the bag and leave the box on your aforementioned beautiful game shelf. You’ll need a large, stable playing surface because these tiles get layed out sort of like dominos and there is no limit to how far you can place them other than the table’s edge. This is a pattern- and colour-matching strategy game for two to four players and is also family friendly and requires no reading. It can be difficult to master for younger players but they may just enjoy making patterns with some of the shapes. You may need pen and paper or a phone to keep score as you and your opponents aim to use up all of the tiles by placing them in sets of matching or contrasting shapes and colours. The design is simple and bright and would suit an outdoor playing table.



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  • Help! I think I’m a gamesplainer! — The Treehouse

    Help! I think I’m a gamesplainer! — The Treehouse



    Dear Mortified,

    Not everyone is as honest as you, so I don’t know for sure, but I have a suspicion that if I had a fiver for everyone who read my last column and developed that sinking feeling of recognition just like you did, I’d… be at least a little bit richer. I appreciate your candour but, for better or worse, you’re not alone. In other words, it might simply be vanity that made you think the post was about you. And… perhaps it was about you, but it was about quite a few other folks as well. 

    Identifying the problem is half the battle though, right? Which means the chances are, if you’ve got enough self awareness to be asking this question, you’ve got enough to keep any gamesplainer tendencies in check. So take my reply as both a reassurance and… also a bit of an intervention:

    For the benefit of you and any other worried potential gamesplainers reading this, here are a few tips for all of those who found that last post hitting a little close to home: 

    1. When you’re choosing a new game to play, make sure everyone else in the group is also up for playing it and you are not pushing them to. Consent is important. They may say this out loud, or through body language, reluctance to play or a cancellation. But you know, as with all situations involving good consent, it’s great to just ask them.

    2. If you get past that stage but your friends tell you they’re worried about not understanding a more complex game, or recoil as you reveal the fifty-six-page rulebook, it is great that you want to reassure them, and often a practice round or a first time play-through really does help. That’s more of a seasoned gamer strategy though, rather than some folks’ idea of a fun night. While we may be used to committing a whole evening to set up, or accepting that our first play through of a complex game may be a bit of a necessary evil, not everyone sees that as required training for the Olympic sport of board gaming (maybe Paris 2024?). In case your guests (or hosts) feel like memorising a rule book is a waste of time rather than a perfect evening, always have a backup game that has a familiar theme, brand, or mechanic in case they are really not up for the challenge.

    3. To help with point 2, and also just in general, it may help to watch a quickstart video before teaching the game so that you can practice in advance and cut down your talking time to maximise playing time. Focus on making sure other players know the style of game and the object of the game – summarise what it takes to win, and then dive in. People can ask questions or consult the rules as they go (whch means you may need to let go of the rulebook for a little while…).

    4. Mix it up a bit. Let someone else explain the game first as often as possible, and only take the reins on the ones no one else is familiar with. You may be assuming some folks are not seasoned gamers because they’re not in your usual gaming circle, but they may have a Kallax full of Catan expansions at home that you just don’t know about. And you never know – other friends may be newer to games, but have a hidden aptitude and the right introduction could mean their delighted entry into a fun and satisfying board game universe. If you’re having a long session of several games, try to ensure that some games are familiar to most of the players.

    5. Finally, try to be aware of whether your voice, vocabulary, and posture change as you start explaining. Do you find yourself becoming louder, using extra-long words or leaning over other players? Are you imagining your Gold Play Button from YouTube hanging on the wall behind you, an array of ring lights in front of you, and about to ask people to like and subscribe right there at the table? This is a sure sign you are launching into a full-on gamesplainer performance. Remember that no matter how much you love games, your friends and family love you and love spending time with you. They will more likely develop enthusiasm for the games you love by watching you enjoy them while just being yourself.

    And so, Mortified in Meersbrook, I wish I could conclude with ‘and there you have it’ but game explaining is an art form that we are all constantly improving at, even here at the Treehouse. Keep working at it and listening to your guests and your gut, and I’m sure you’ll soon settle into a new style that helps everyone to at least feel comfortable and, hopefully, excited to join you for the next game night. 

    Good luck, 

    Chella on behalf of Team Treehouse xx

    So that’s our second advice column! If you have a burning board game-related question you want answering, please email The Treehouse at contact@treehousesheffield.com with the subject heading “Agony Aunt”. All letters will be anonymised.

    Chella Quint is a Treehouse staffer, board gamer, and author of the books Be Period Positive and Own Your Period.



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  • When does school start again? Games for keeping kids entertained through the ‘end of summer slump’ — The Treehouse

    When does school start again? Games for keeping kids entertained through the ‘end of summer slump’ — The Treehouse



    Animal Upon Animal is fun for all ages including adults but is particularly popular with the four- to six-year-old crowd. In this game from Haba for 2-4 players, you compete to see who can stack all of your animals first. The stack you are building is shared (the French name of this game, ‘Pyramids Des Animaux’ may offer a better visual of what happens as the game progresses), which means you don’t have the luxury of setting up sturdy balancing positions for yourself. Everyone is dealt a hand of adorable wooden animal-shaped blocks. A crocodile block is placed in the center of the table and players take turns rolling the die and following the instructions.

    The instructions on the die are really quite ingenious for moving the game along in clever ways. You may be instructed to place one animal on top of the crocodile’s back, or you might see two animals on the die, meaning you have to place one after another. You can also be asked to give one of your pieces to someone else to place or have the other players choose which of your animals to place next (and they will invariably select one that is harder to balance). The final option is a picture of a crocodile, which means you can extend the base block to have a larger area to balance animals upon.

    The reason I think this game is particularly enjoyable for younger children starting school especially is because even if you make the tower fall, you don’t lose and the game doesn’t end. The maximum penalty if more than two fall off the pile is that you take two animals back into your hand and continue playing. This keeps the focus on dexterity, strategy, and making stacks of cute animals, and nicely swerves siblings blaming each other for quote ‘ruining the game’ or a fear of failure at a time when there are a lot of new expectations. (OK, I clearly have some some childhood Jenga tower collapse issues to explore but never mind that now). Haba games are great generally for this age group. Dragon’s Breath is another lovely Haba game that fans of Animal Upon Animal may enjoy.

    Games for very little ones

    And finally, even if they’re not ready for big school yet, that doesn’t mean they aren’t ready for gaming (some of my friends’ toddlers have attempted to prove this by taking out every game on the lowest shelf ready to play…).

    At this age, the focus for parents choosing games is about two things, really – replayability, and doing something that looks like what the big kids are doing, so the big kids’ game doesn’t get wrecked (for example, my three-year-old niece recently ripped the Candyland board clean in half, in the most impressive WWE style rage quit I’ve heard about in years. It would have been more impressive, I suppose, if I hadn’t been the one who bought it for her and if it hadn’t been my favourite game when I was her age. I hope she is not still doing that when she’s 30, but it was epic nonetheless).

    I know, you wouldn’t think there could be a game that would keep a two-and-a-half-year-old entertained, but there is actually an entire series of them by a lovely French toy and game company called Djeco. They have a whole host of adorable games that are both beautifully designed and suitable for toddlers, which is incredibly rare in the world of board games. These games look like a game and feel like a game, but are more about gamifying toddler skills like matching and sequencing and recognising colours. It’s really very clever and the history of this company originally had a child development focus. Add in materials and designs that appeal to a grown up aesthetic and these games are pretty great for everyone. We have several of their games in the shop and our games library but I will focus on Little Collect (in the first of the photos below).

    Little Collect is for ages 2.5 to 5. It’s a cooperative game for two players and takes about ten minutes… or as long as attention spans allow. The object of the game ostensibly is to follow picture instructions on the cards you draw until you have completed a scene on the game board. But beware! There is mild peril! The pastoral tableau of adorable bunnies eating peas and carrots can be disrupted. If you are unlucky enough to draw a fox card, one bunny must be ominously removed from your board. It can be returned on a later turn to complete the game, but still. Hey ho, circle of life. Sun rise, sun set. As sure as autumn follows summer, soon enough, even your littlest Little Connect player will be starting school too.

    And you know what that means: more time for gaming for you.



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