family game

Call the Midwife – The Board Game

March 17, 2019 by Penny Leave a Comment

AD: Call the Midwife – The Board Game Review

I absolutely love Call the Midwife. It’s required Sunday evening viewing in my house and it’s one of those programmes that give you that warm comforting feeling. Like you’re being wrapped up in a handmade crochet blanket and served a cup of tea and a slice of cake whilst watching it.

When Bonn and I were at the recent Toy Fair at London’s Olympia an advert on the floor of the hall caught my attention. Who wouldn’t love a board game version of my favourite TV programme?

I managed to make time between meetings to find Rachel Lowe’s stand and talk to her about the game and was thrilled when she asked me to review it here on Penny Plays.

The aim of the game is quite simple really. Be the midwife to deliver the most babies. Sounds easy doesn’t it? But in Call the Midwife life is never that simple!

Players choose to be one of the four midwives – Nurse Trixie, Nurse Valerie, Nurse Lucille, or my personal favourite Nurse Crane – and they have to travel around Poplar delivering babies. The game board is not designed as most usually are with a clear route round them. Instead you have a plan view of poplar with various addresses and key locations marked and routes between them. It’s up to you how you travel around.

Players start off by having to travel to Nonnatus House to collect a Delivery Card telling them where they need to head for their first delivery. Delivery locations are scattered around Poplar and could be a home address or possibly even the police station or the Doctor’s surgery. Off you go, rolling the die to move around the board towards your destination. But on the way there, there is a chance they’ll be called away to deal with something else. This happens by landing on a Nonnatus House symbol which means a player has to collect a Nonnatus House card. This could mean that you instead have to head to a different location on the board before making your delivery, or it may be some slightly better news. Something along the lines of getting another turn, passing on your delivery to the player sitting next to you, or your next delivery being twins or triplets meaning you can collect two or three baby tokens instead of the usual one.

Each time you reach a delivery destination you collect a baby token and it is the number of these tokens that you manage to collect in the game that decides the winner. That’s why delivering twins or triplets can be super helpful in trying to win the game.

After each delivery the midwives need to return to Nonnatus House to find out where they need to go for their next delivery.

The end of the game is when all the baby tokens have been collected. At this point all midwives have to race back to Nonnatus House and the first one to get there gets on bonus baby token (denoted by a larger baby token). The total number of babies per midwife is counted up and the player with the most is the winner.

In the event of two midwives having made the same number of deliveries, each is given a new delivery card and the first midwife to reach their delivery is the winner.

We played Call the Midwife with my eight year old daughter who was very keen to play a game based on “Mummy’s favourite TV programme”. She picked up the rules quickly, and it also sparked some very interesting conversations with her about the move away from home births and the role of the NHS in history. She thoroughly enjoyed the game play and was rather pleased to finish the game in a very close second place.

I thought the game was excellent and great fun to play. The way that you kept darting around the board gave you a very good feel for what the midwives were actually doing – darting all over Poplar, not knowing where they would be going for their next delivery or what else they might be called away to do first. Picking up the Nonnatus House cards as you went around the board really kept you on your toes. I am inclined to agree with a bit of feedback that Rachel Lowe said she had already received about increasing the number of Nonnatus House cards in the game as we did tend to work our way through them all quite quickly.

You don’t need to be familiar with the television programme to be able to play, but I can see the game being a huge hit with fans. Personally I loved being no nonsense Nurse Crane for the evening!

Call the Midwife The Board Game is available to buy online here and is priced at £28.99.

Disclaimer: We were sent a copy of Call the Midwife The Board Game for the purposes of this review. All opinions remain my own. This post contains affiliate links.

The Cooking Game – the delicious new family board game

February 11, 2019 by Penny Leave a Comment

Finding vintage board games in charity shops can be a bit hit and miss. Some days there is nothing at all. Other days you don’t have arms big enough to carry everything you find. The latter was the case when B and I went on a recent trawl round the charity shops of Upminster. We were there to tick off a few District Line stations on our Tube Stop Baby Challenge but decided to use the opportunity to see if there were any vintage board games to be had and I’m so glad we did. Mainly for finding The Cooking Game.

We’d found a variety of games in the charity shops and were feeling very pleased with ourselves when we agreed to just go in one last shop before catching the tube home. That particular shop had one game in that we wanted, but as I walked towards the till I quickly cast my eye over where the jigsaws were as experience has shown me that charity shops often end up confusing the two and there are sometimes games to be found nestling between 1000 pieces scenes of the English countryside.

My mini-detour paid off when I spotted The Cooking Game on sale at a bargain price of just £1.99. Published in 1984 by the The Garden Game Ltd this has the subtitle of “the delicious new family board game” and my interest was immediately piqued. The box shows a variety of outdoor landscape scenes and also a load of food ingredients.

What is The Cooking Game?

Other than a note saying “with recipes by Jane Grigson” the front of the box doesn’t really give away much of what the game is about. Turn it over though and you get a black and white picture of the game board and a bit more information. As a game for 2 – 6 players it is described as “fast-moving, funny and informative” and I can see why.

Aim of the game

The aim of the game is to be the first player to collect all the ingredients for at least two courses of a dinner – a main course (consisting of 12 ingredients) and either a starter or a pudding (each consisting of 6 ingredients). The recipes that you are collecting ingredients for are created by Jane Grigson, at the time one of the country’s best loved cooks. The recipes all come from different parts of the British Isles, and to add an educational angle to the ingredients on the cards are written in several different languages.

An overview of how to play

The game board is a plan layout of a house. Think Cluedo style, but with a kitchen as the centre of the house. All the ingredients you need for your recipes (plus a few other cards that I will come along to later) can be found in six different places on the game board:

Front Door
Back Door
Larder
Kitchen Cupboard
Cellar
Garden

You basically go around the board collecting cards when you land on the doorways to these places. You either collect an ingredient, or in the case of the Front Door you find Front Door Arrivals. These are helpful people that can help with some of the chores that you find as you go around the board. This means you could get a fetching you man delivering a Dishwasher, or a Niece who will dry the dishes. The Front Door can also mean the arrival of various extras to enhance your meal. Possibly a bottle of Campari, or some After Eight Mints.

Between the doorways on the board are a variety of chores and hazards which might involve you having to miss a go whilst you sweep the floor, or possibly even climb up on to the kitchen table to avoid scuttling mice!

Going to the loo

This has to be the only board game that I have encountered that involves going to the loo! Yep, you read that right. If you land on the bathroom doorway then you have to miss a turn whilst you “go to the loo”.

Making phone calls

The real twist in the cooking game is the fact that at certain positions on the board a player is able to make a telephone call. You can make a call to ask any other player if they have ingredients that you need for your recipe. It’s not as simple as just asking and getting though. You can only ask if you already hold two ingredients for that recipe yourself. Also, whilst on the phone, if successful with your first request, you might ask for ingredients for a second recipe. If they don’t hold what you need this time round though the person you telephoned may instead ask you for up to two sets of ingredients.

In other words telephoning someone can be risky business as it might actually result in you losing some of the ingredients that you hold. Phone at your own risk.

End of the game and scoring

The Cooking Game ends when one player has all the required ingredients to make one main course and one starter or desert. You then move on to the scoring stage of the game when I think everyone playing hopes that they haven’t consumed so much wine that they can’t do the maths involved.

With points allocated to completed recipes as well as for each ingredient in a complete recipe players can also get additional points for extras they may have picked from the Front Door like After Eights or Flowers.

Things then get really complicated though with points for “impure recipes”. In other words, if you can convince the other players that ingredients you hold can be combined into an acceptable course then it can score you points!This could be something as simple as Strawberries and Cream, or something much more complicated, with no limit on how many ingredients an impure recipe can contain.

It’s therefore quite possible that the person who finishes first isn’t necessarily the winner.

Game Sponsors

It’s obvious that The Cooking Game wasn’t a big budget production, yet the finished result, although dated, was a quality product. The playing pieces in particular are really weighty and made of metal, rather than the plastic that you might get today.

One of the reasons for this touch of quality is probably the fact that the game had a number of sponsors. The instruction booklet has five pages devoted to them and they also appear throughout the game. I’ve already mentioned cards bearing After Eights and Campari, but all domestic appliances in the game are from Zanussi, the luxury vinyl flooring in the kitchen is from Amtico and the house’s cellar seems to be sponsored by Roberts & Cooper wine merchants.

Even the playing pieces are linked to the sponsors with a bottle of Piat D’Or wine, a tin of Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup and an Oxo cube as playing pieces.

The prize for most obscure sponsor though has to go to the Halifax. At the time proudly still a Building Society, and sponsors of the two spare cards in the game. Random!

Taste of the 80s

We actually had great fun playing The Cooking Game, but it really was like being back in the 80s in so many ways. The style of recipes, the cards and game design, and the whole notion of having elaborate dinner parties. If that weren’t enough the instruction book tries to explain how the telephone call part of the game works by giving examples of two couple playing the game – Charles and Diana, and Paul and Linda!

Play with us on the Podcast

If you want to experience The Cooking Game for yourselves then why not join Bonn and myself as we play on the Hobbies and Interests podcast? Look out for the new episode that will be released very soon.

Jump the Queue

January 9, 2019 by Penny Leave a Comment

Transport related games are always a hit in our house and I was therefore intrigued to come across Jump the Queue for just £2 in a local charity shop. I noted that it was from Spears Games and having had so much success with their games previously I didn’t really give it much thought before paying for it. After all it was only a couple of quid. But it was £2 very well spent!

About Jump the Queue

Jump the Queue was released in 1989, but the whole game has a very 70s or early 80s feel about it. The illustrations on the board and the playing pieces really remind me of those in some Ladybird books from the early 80s.

Aim of the game

The aim of the game is to score the most points by beating your opponents in a race to a beach resort in various modes of transport. Each player has five different vehicles that they are trying to get to the resort: limousine, coach, camper, bubble car and scooter. Just the inclusion of a bubble car in this list gives it a vintage feel.

Each different mode of transport is headed to a different seaside hotel and the player who gets there first gets the best parking space, with the most points attached.

How to play

The game starts without any playing pieces on the board. As each player takes their turn they roll the special die which tells them which playing piece they should move, but not how far they should move it. That all depends on how long the queue is.

The way the game works is that you move your playing piece to the first available space on the board, jumping any queue that might be in your way. Hence the name of the game. You can play with up to four players, and this can mean some quite long queues that need jumping!

The die also has on it a “joker” and if you roll that then you are allowed to move any vehicle, but more importantly, you can have three moves. So this could mean that you move one vehicle three times, or instead that you’ve three different vehicles. Whichever you decide it can make a real difference to how you are doing in the game if you roll a joker.

When you get to the end of the route on the board with a vehicle, moving it over the zebra crossing, you can then park your vehicle at the designated hotel. Each hotel parking slot has points attached to it. If you’re the first player there then you get the top parking slot, second you get the second best one, and third the third best one. However, if all three spaces at the hotel are full you have no where to park your vehicle, and so get zero points for it. Hence, you have to be a bit strategic in how you play the game and which vehicles you move when.

Ending the game

The game ends when all five top parking spots are full. This may mean that one or more players still have pieces out there on the board, or maybe have not managed to get a single vehicle to the seaside destination. This is why the order in which you move your vehicles can be so important as the game progresses.

The most complicated part of the game is probably working our each player’s score at the end. It does add a level of mystery to the game though as unless you keep on top of everyone’s scores you might not know who is actually winning. With five vehicles to park it’s not necessarily just a case of getting all five there to win, but depends on when you get there in comparison to the other players.

Jump the Queue – the verdict

Everyone here – aged from 6 up to 70+ – enjoyed playing Jump the Queue. It’s got a great mix of simplicity and strategy. Younger players may not concentrate on the strategy element quite so much, but for them the ideal of leap-frogging other (older) players on a board is always an attractive one. The jolly illustrations make it feel very retro

Jump the Queue – the facts

Produced by Spears Games in 1989.

For 2 – 4 players, aged 6 to adult.

At the time of writing there is a copy available to buy secondhand on Amazon UK here and also a copy on eBay UK.

If you’re interested in vintage board games then why not head over to Facebook and join our new vintage board games group.

Guinness World Records Challenges

December 5, 2018 by Penny Leave a Comment

A couple of weeks ago my daughter came home from school with a copy of the Guinness Book of Records from the school library. She’d reached that stage that I think all children get to when they suddenly realise that there are people out in the world doing some crazy, crazy things so that they can become a world record holder. Admittedly there are the more serious records for sports and other notable achievements, but then there are also things like the record for the largest collection of rubber ducks (5,631 at the time theGuinness World Records Challenges game was published, in case you were wondering). She spent the week pouring over the book and also put in a request to Father Christmas for the latest version as a Christmas present.

I had no idea that there was a broad game based on Guinness World Records until I was asked to review Guinness World Records Challenges. Seeing as she was so addicted to the book I guessed that this was something LMC would enjoy, and how right I was.

Aim of the game

The aim of Guinness World Record sChallenges is to be the first player to get to the finish line on the board having completed three challenges during your journey. Let me explain what I mean by challenges and how play actually works.

How to play

Guinness World Records Challenges has a standard style board where players take it in turns to roll a (special) die) to work their way around the board. They start (unsurprisingly) on the start square, and continue in a clockwise direction taking it in turns.

On the board there are three different types of squares that you can land on. Question squares – where you answer a question relating to an existing record – or two different types of challenge square. These challenge squares can be one of two types: Best Time or 30 Second challenges.

Guinness World Records Challenges Die

The die used in this game is unique in that it has the numbers 1 to 4 on it, but also two challenge symbols: one purple denoting Best Time challenges, and the other orange for 30 Second challenges. If you roll a number on the die then you simply move forward that number of spaces. If you roll one of the challenge symbols then you simply move to the next challenge symbol of that colour on the game board.

Questions

If you land on a question square you pick up one of the 150 question cards. On each there are details of an existing record and then four related multiple choice questions. The number you rolled on the die tells you which question you will be asked from the card. If you get a correct answer then you roll again and have another go. If you get it wrong then play moves on to the next player round the board.

Challenges

As I’ve already mentioned, there are two different types of challenge in the game:

Best Time challenges
30 Second challenges

You can access the challenges in two ways during game play. Either by rolling one of the challenge symbols on the die, or by landing on one of the challenge squares as you move around the board. Once you do either of these you can then choose between picking up a challenge card and completing it yourself, or choosing another player and challenging them to beat you in a particular challenge – either by doing something faster (in the case of a Best Time challenge) or doing more of something in a 30 Second challenge.

If you win the challenge then you get to keep the challenge card. You need three of these (at least one of each colour) to win the game.

Challenge levels and other equipment required

The challenges in the game vary quite a bit, but that’s what I think makes this game very accessible to people of all different ages and abilities.

It could be something from how many star jumps you can do in 30 seconds, through to how long it takes you to create a necklace of 25 paper clips. Let’s be honest – there’s one of these that I would expect my six year old son to be able to do quite easily and another which may be more suited to his Granny!

The nature of the challenges mean that the game instructions do include a list of household objects that you need to play. These are things that you probably would have around, but it may just be that you need to find them before you start playing. When you start each game you don’t need all the challenge cards out on the board (the instructions tell you how many you need based on the number of players) so you can filter out any challenges that you don’t have the right equipment to hand for, or that you don’t think will work for the range of players you have round the table.

Verdict as a family game

The more I played Guinness World Records Challenges the more I realised just how perfect it is as a family game for players of all ages and abilities. As well as being able to be a bit selective on which challenges may come up during a game, the fact that the questions are multiple choice means that players who don’t know the answer actually have a decent chance of getting the answer correct. In some questions there are three possible answers, in others four and some questions are true or false ones meaning a 50% chance of getting it right. LMC was able to make a couple of lucky guesses so that she didn’t feel like her lack of knowledge slowed her down. Even the adults had to resort to guesses on some. After all, how many people know that Agatha Christie learnt how to surf???

The game comes with a separate booklet of “specific guidelines” for the challenges included, but I looked at that as being very much guidelines rather than rules. As I saw it you can tweak the guidelines again based on who you have playing.

The only thing I possibly found a little strange was that the game is for 2 to 5 players. I’m much more used to games having an even number of maximum players, but maybe that’s just me not paying attention all the time.

I can definitely see Guinness World Record Challenges being an excellent game to bring out at Christmas. There’s that perfect mix of general and trivia knowledge for the questions, combined with the amusement of the challenges. Whilst the age range on the box is 8+ I think that it’s possible to adapt it a bit for younger players (maybe age 6 and up) whilst still having enough in there to keep the adults amused and entertained.

Guinness World Records Challenges – the facts

Guinness World Records Challenges is published by Megableu. It is for 2 – 5 players, aged 8+. It is available to buy online here. It has a RRP of £24.99, but is often available for less online.

Disclaimer: We were sent a copy of the Guinness World Records Challenges for the purposes of this review. All opinions remain my own. This post contains affiliate links.

Make ‘n’ Break – Build together in a race against the clock

November 10, 2018 by Penny Leave a Comment

I’ve spent a fair bit of time recently on the look out for games that both my kids (aged 6 and 8) can play with me and my husband. Loads of family games seem to be age 8+ which works for my daughter, but not all of them are suitable for my son – mainly because he’s not a confident, fluid reader yet. I was therefore intrigued when I saw Make ‘n’ Break as I hoped it would be exactly what we were looking for.

Make ‘n’ Break Overview

The main aim of Make ‘n’ Break is to use the 10 coloured building blocks to build the structures that are shown on the blueprint cards. There’s a time limit for building them and, depending on how many people you have playing, players are required to co-operate with each other. Let me explain.

Master C, Little Miss C and I decided to give the game an initial test run with just the three of us. The way the three player game works is that you are required to work in teams of two to build structures, but each time the team of two is different. This meant that in three goes I had one working with LMC, one with Master C and one where the pair of them had to work together. That’s certainly a test of siblings!

How to play

In the basic game (otherwise known as the original game) the two builders in a team start by collecting the building blocks (5 each) and rolling the time die to see how long they have got to build. The timer is set and then as the first blueprint card is turned over they have to start building against the clock.

The idea is that they are supposed to only touch the 5 blocks that they chose at the start of the turn – not the ones that the other player has. We were a bit flexible about this particular rule with Master C playing, but you would certainly want to enforce it for older players.

Once a structure is complete, and correct, it is broken and each player in the team again is allocated five building blocks. They then start work on the next blueprint and continue in this way until the timer runs out.

The Blueprints

Players have to build the structures shown on blueprint cards and these can either show the whole structure requiring all the colours to line up, or it may be one where the block colours used are irrelevant. Some of them have a mix of the two where some coloured blocks have required positions, whereas others can go anywhere.

Scoring

You get points for each structure that you manage to build within the allocated time and the way that it works when you are in a team is that both of you score the points for each structure. After three rounds you count up the total number of points per person to determine the overall winner. Until then it’s hard to actually tell who is winning, as each structure has a different number of points allocated to it.

Game variants

The version of Make ‘n’ Break that I have described so far is the original game. There are also instructions inside for an “action version” of the game. This incorporates the second dice that is in the box.

In addition to rolling the time die, you also roll the action die and it tells you to do one of the following things:

Describe It – one player describes what to build to the other one
Fingertips – you can only use your fingertips to hold the building blocks
Risky Business – you start your turn by declaring how many blueprints you are going to complete
Vertical / Horizontal – One player is in charge of placing horizontal blocks only, and the other vertical blocks only
5 plus 5 – build as in the original game, with just five building blocks handled by each player
Bomb Bonus – A special bonus round in which players build on their own, but they’re in a race to not be building when the timer runs out. The problem is that the timer is hidden so no one knows how long you’ve got!

Make ‘n’ Break – the verdict

Make ‘n’ Break completely lived up to expectations in terms of a game that my six and eight year olds could both play with me. Yes, we tweaked the rules of the original game a little bit to accommodate my six year old, but not significantly so. And I don’t think he realised that we did.

The thing that I really, really liked about the game though was that it encouraged team work between the kids. They had to work together in a way that they’re not really used to in board games. It was lovely to see them cooperating and as I hadn’t really expected that angle of the game when I got it out of the box it was a pleasant surprise to me as we learnt to play it together.

I also really liked how frantic the game could become. A real race against time, whilst still trying to be careful with what you built and follow instructions accurately. Great for practicing those fine motor skills that I know parents are keen for children to master young and then retain.

Make ‘n’ Break – the facts

Make ‘n’ Break is published is Ravensburger. The games is for 2 – 5 players and has a recommended age on the box of 8+. As mentioned above, Master C is six years old and happily played the basic version of the game with some adult help. It has an RRP of £24.99 but is often available for less online. It can be purchased online here.

Disclaimer: We were sent a copy of Make ‘n’ Break for the purposes of this review. All opinions remain my own. This post contains affiliate links.

Baffled – the game where you’ll need the memory of an elephant to win

October 22, 2018 by Penny Leave a Comment

Baffled is one of those games where I made the mistake of just getting the rules leaflet out first and reading that in isolation to try to get to grips with the game. I ended up a bit Baffled myself. The trick with games is to actually get the board and other things out of the box first and read the rules in conjunction with them. Games generally make a lot more sense when you do that. Certainly Baffled does!

Aim of the game

The aim of the game in Baffled is to stay in the game longer than any other player. Each player is given a number of “life” cards at the start of the game and when they have used up all their lives they are out.

A test of memory

But what do you actually have to do? I hear you ask. Well – that bit is relatively simple. In theory at least.

You need to memorise the position of 12 symbols on the board. In the centre of the Baffled board are 12 squares, labelled A through to L. They are arranged with three of each side of a central square.

The symbols themselves appear on 12 different tiles and what they are, and the colours are important. The game contains the following:

Numbers: 1 (blue), 2 (green), 3 (red), 4 (yellow)

Animals: Dolphin (blue), Frog (green), Ladybird (red), Lion (yellow)

Fruits: Plum (blue), Apple (green), Strawberry (red), Lemon (yellow)

At the start of the game the symbol tiles are all covered up and placed around the inner square. They are then revealed to players who have 60 seconds to try to memorise where they all are. That doesn’t sound too difficult to start with.

Play

Around the edge of the board is a typical board game style path for players to work their way around based on throws of the die. At each square though players are asked to do something related to the symbol tiles.

On the simplest squares they just need to try to remember where a particular symbol is. After making their guess the cover of that square is revealed so everyone can see if they got it right or not. If they didn’t then they lose a life.

In addition to this there are squares when a player can challenge another player (of their choosing) to state where a particular symbol is around the board. If the challenged player gets it right then the one asking the question loses a life, so you need to choose carefully.

On other squares players must name what symbols are at two particular locations on the board. Remembering one can be tricky enough, but two???

The squares on the board that really confuse matters though are the swap squares. A player may land on a square where they are told to swap around the positions of two of the symbol tiles. ~Even worse for the memory are the squares where they are just told to swap any two tiles of their choosing!

Winning back lives

As you can probably tell, there are plenty of squares around the board that are full of opportunities for you to lose lives. There are luckily also four squares where you can try to win a life back. Located in the corners of the board these squares require you to find three of one of the symbol types. This could be three fruit, three numbers, three animals, or the three things that are in your colour group. Each player having a playing counter which is either blue, green, red or yellow.

If you have a good memory, and can keep track of all the swapping around of symbols that has been taking place, then you deserve to be able to regain a life!

Baffled – the verdict

We absolutely loved playing Baffled. It was by far one of the best family games we’ve played lately. The swapping around of symbols keeps even the players with good memories on their toes. It’s quite funny watching how frustrated other players can get when they’re desperately trying to remember where they saw something. After playing a couple of games back to back they can merge into one. It can be difficult to try to figure out if you are actually remembering where symbols are located in that game, or in an earlier one!

As is fast becoming our measure of whether a family board game is good or not, discussion soon turned to whether my mum would enjoy the game. We’re pretty sure she would, but there’s also an edge of fear as we know what a good memory and eye for detail she can have!

Baffled – the facts

Baffled is for 2-4 players, age 8+. It is available to buy online here and has an RRP of £22.00 At the time of writing it is available online for £20.80. It is produced by Cheatwell Games.

Disclaimer: We received our copy of Baffled as a raffle prize at Blog On Toys as it had been entered into the Blog On Toy Awards. We were not asked to write a review of the game. This post contains affiliate links.