Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to SafariWhat is the best alternative to The Magic Labyrinth?
Top Pro
Top Pro
Top Con
Top Pro
Top Pro
Top Pro
Top Pro
Top Pro
Top Pro
Top Pro
Top Pro
Top Pro
Top Pro
Top Pro
Top Pro
The game can lead to some awesome moments because of the little penguins. Depending on where you hit the penguin, it will move differently. For example, if you flick the head of it, it will make the penguin jump. This can lead to some crazy trick-shots where someone manages to jump over walls. You can also flick them on the side, which will make the penguin spin. By doing this you could spin through multiple rooms and gather a lot of points or catch several penguins on the same turn. See More
The gameboard of Ice Cool is big, but it’s quite simple to set up. The playing surface consists of five boxes that all fit in the game’s box. You connect them in the correct places, all of which are marked with colored dots on the edges of the boxes. After that you take the little beige colored fish tokens and place them in the marked spots to keep the gameboard in place, and you’re good to go. See More
Catching penguins and gathering fish to get victory points in Ice Cool requires skill, but the values on the fish cards you get range from 1 to 3, which means that even if you’re good at the game, you can lose because of pure chance. Someone could potentially score the same amount out of one card as you with three cards. See More
Ice Cool is very straightforward, it all revolves around flicking little penguin pawns. Doorways will have fish pegs attached to them, when you flick a penguin through it, then you’ll receive the fish and get to draw a fish card that gives you victory points. Each round one player will be the hall monitor who will try to catch other penguins and gather their student ID’s by hitting them instead of gathering fish. The round ends either when the hall monitor has gathered all ID’s or when someone has gathered all three fish tokens. The game ends when everyone has been the hall monitor. The player with the most points on their fish cards wins. See More
Aesthetically Ice Cool looks very impressive. The playing surface is a 3D school consisting of five different rooms that feature many little details all over the walls – maps, fish, basketball hoops, etc. Everything has a blue, cold-looking color scheme, which kind of mimics an igloo. The cards also have some great artwork on them. The ID’s are two-sided for boys and girls. Each colored penguin has a different look and style. The fish cards depict, you guessed it, fish. The bigger the point value, the bigger the meal. See More
The components of Ice Cool are very interesting and well-made. The game’s playing surface is made of five 3D boxes that all fit in the game’s box. The player tokens are four penguins made of hard plastic that are weighted in the base so that they keep wobbling when hit. Throughout the game players gather fish tokens, which are nice and small wooden pieces similar to pegs. There are also some cards in the game – ID cards and fish cards, which are all made of durable cardstock. See More
Race to the Treasure introduces children to concepts such as making choices, prioritizing, and planning. Adults can guide kids to the best choices and explain them, which makes the game a good educational tool. There are many meaningful decisions to be made – where to place the tile, how to plan a route, picking between a key, an ogre snack, or the exit, etc. See More
Race to the Treasure is extremely simple and can be taught in a matter of minutes to anyone. The mechanic is elementary – you draw a tile and place it. The tile can be either a path or an ogre. If it’s a path, then you decide where to connect it to the road you’re building. If it’s an ogre, then it’s added to the ogre track. When you gather three keys and reach the exit, everyone wins. If the ogre reaches the exit first, you lose. See More
Setting up the game is quick and easy. You place the board, shuffle the tiles, and then roll the two dice, one with a number and one with a letter, to determine where the keys and the ogre snacks are going to be placed on the 6x8 grid. This also helps younger children with numbers and letters, so the setup can also be educational. See More
The components of The Enchanted Tower are top-notch in terms of quality, creativity, and uniqueness. Moreover, the art looks magnificent – it’s colorful and highly detailed. The game is played on many levels on the game’s box - under the colorful gameboard there is not only storage for the components, but also sixteen slots in which the sorcerer hides the key that unlocks the enchanted tower. There’s also a little circular section that must be placed on the corner of the box with eight extra steps on which the wizard must start the game. The tower itself is an actual tower in the corner of the gameboard that has the princess figure placed in the middle. The player pieces (the wizard and Robin) are minimalistic figures that have magnets on the bottom, which are used to grab the key when you step over the correct tile. After you’ve received the key, you can place it in one of the six locks on the enchanted tower to see if the lock triggers the spring-loaded mechanism in the tower that causes the princess to jump out. See More
The basics of The Enchanted Tower can be understood very quickly even by the youngest players. One player takes on the role of the sorcerer who hides the key to the princess’ tower under one of the 16 spaces on the gameboard. The other player is Robin who must try to find the key. Players take turns rolling dice, one die indicates who moves first, whereas the other one shows how many steps can be taken. Once the key has been found, the player who found it can try to place it in one of the six locks on the princess’ tower. If it works, then the princess will pop out and the player who did it wins. If the tower doesn’t unlock, then the game is reset, and the sorcerer hides the key again. See More
The game can be very engaging, and it also has a light roleplay element. Gameplay-wise there are some intense moments, for example, when the wizard sees Robin near the location of the key, or when the Robin player sees the wizard catching up. The game has a nice little story in the official rulebook, which can help with the immersion. Also, sometimes playing the wizard leads to people changing their voice and doing evil laughs, which can be great fun for everyone around. See More
The complexity level of the game is great for younger children – it teaches them a lot more than just flipping tiles and moving, it also handles memory, resource management, and some risk. The forest tiles are upside down, and two of them get flipped every time someone reaches the hut space, so you must keep track of where the tile you want is. There’s quite a bit of trading and exchanging. When you land on the construction space, you trade in specific resources for a hut. The price of the hut is shown on the bottom of the hut tiles, it can either be three different resources or two resources of the same type. Also, when you reach the trading post tile, you can trade one resource for another. The game also has a dog “wildcard”, which can substitute any resource, but there’s a catch – there are only two dogs in the game, and if they’re all taken when someone walks on the dog tile, then they can steal it from one of the players, so it’s a risk to hang on to it too long. See More
Similarly to the actual Stone Age, the artwork and the components look great, albeit with a cartoony twist, which befits a children’s game. The gameboard and hut tiles have cute prehistoric artwork that include little cavemen doing all kinds of silly stuff – swimming down waterfalls, playing, eating, etc. The 3D villages look very cool, and there’s no mistaking what the resource tokens are supposed to be. See More
My First Stone Age is easy to play, as a children’s game should be. Players take turns flipping tokens that tell them where to move. The tokens feature either icons with specific spots or dice, in which case you must move the according amount of spaces. When you reach the hut space, then you can use combinations of resources you’ve gathered to build a hut. The first player to build three of them wins the game. See More