Dale Yu:  Playing “Adult” Games with the Kids this Summer

Well, as you’re likely aware, school is out – and that means that the kids are home a lot more than they used to be!  While there will be plenty of TV watching and Nintendo Wii playing, I am (again) trying to make sure that the kids are doing other things like playing outside, reading, or playing boardgames.  Of course, both my kids and myself are getting a bit tired of the “children’s” games that we have in the closet.  Not many of the bright yellow HABA games are ever making it out of the basement anymore as they simply don’t hold the interest of the boys any longer – well other than Monza which remains my kids favorite game to play.  So, this summer, I’m going to start a thorough examination of the adult games in the collection and see which ones will translate over into the 8-year-old and 6-year-old range.  As you’ve likely read here in the past, my kids have a pretty good appetite and aptitude for gaming.  However, as I have tried playing a few “real” games with them, I’m finding a widely varied response to the games I pull out.  I’ve actually been a bit surprised about which games have been well received and which ones have fallen flat, and interestingly, I don’t really have a good method for predicting what will succeed or not!

Choosing which games to try has been an inexact science at best.  What I’m really looking for are games that I think my kids will be able to pick up.  I’m not overly worried about rulebook complexity as I’m going to be there teaching the game to them and playing along with them (at least for the first few game).  I’d prefer that the kids be able to play the “full” game or at least a variant that is outlined in the rules so that if they ever want to play the game with others, they are able to do so.  I’m not a big fan of teaching someone a “home version” or “dumbed-down” version of a game which can then only be played with the same players that learned it.  I’d rather just wait until my kids are able to play a real version of the game before teaching it to them

I will admit that I am straying away from games that have pieces which can be easily destroyed (or at least not easily replaced) as the kids still have a tendency to be heavy handed with cards and other fragile components.  Also, I’m not letting them play with any game that I’m not willing to part with – as again, there’s no guarantee that the pieces will always make it back in pristine condition after the kids are done with it.  Sadly, this means that the kids have not yet had a chance to play Elfengold, Extrablatt or Hotel Life.  But – they’ll get over it!  (I, however, do have at least one copy of Star Wars: Epic Duels that I’m just waiting for them to be able to play.)

So, what games have I tried recently?  Dominion, Peeper, Walk the Dogs, and Fauna.

Dominion - Well, as I’m fairly certain that you already know, I’m one of the developers for Dominion, and much of my gaming time in the past two years has been spent working on the base game and (multiple) expansions.  Admittedly, I last tried to get the kids to play this about a year ago – but it makes it to the table a LOT around here, so I’m always evaluating when my kids will be ready for this one. 

My kids have sat in on countless testing sessions and seem to be interested in the game.  They love being the one who gets to dole out cards from the Supply to the people that buy them.  They also seem to get a certain joy at passing out the Curse cards when directed to do so. As you could imagine, at some point, they asked if they could try the game themselves. 

Sadly, I just don’t think that they were ready for it (being 7-years-old and 5-years-old at the time).  They were more than able to pick up the basic flow of the game – having watched probably hundreds of games over the past year – but they weren’t really able to get into the game.  They are both fairly bright kids, and they were both able to mimic decks that I had made in the past.  However, neither child seemed to have fun while playing it.  We finished a few games, and then the kids simply asked to play something else.  They still enjoy watching us play, and they love being involved by handing out the cards – but neither has asked to play it again yet.  I think I’ll probably wait until the fall and see if they will try it again.

I think that they will soon be able to pick this up and have fun with it.  As we move into more complicated games, they are learning how to evaluate different choices, and I think that this will help get a better feel for the game.  Admittedly, it’s been almost a year since I last tried getting them to play – so they my already be ready now… But I don’t want to rush it because I want them to be able to play when I next show it to them.

Peeper - This is a climbing game produced in Korea which I first saw at Essen 2008.  I figure that this is a good introduction to climbing games until I can get the kids playing Lexio or Tichu!  The bright orange plastic pieces immediately attracted the kids, and I always feel comfortable that they pretty much can’t do anything to damage the game!

This has been a hit with the kids, and they have liked it so much that they will often pull it out with their friends from here in the neighborhood.  They have taught all the local kids how to play, and it’s nice that they no longer need me around to remind them how to play!

Essentially, the goal of Peeper is to be the first player to rid yourself of your whole hand.  A player starts a trick (with a single tile, or a pair, or perhaps a straight) and then each player in thru can play if they can follow the type of combination played but with a higher value.  Whichever player wins the trick then gets to start the next trick with whatever combination they wish.  There are some advanced rules where players have to decide if they want to gamble on being the person who succeeds in going out first, but the kids have thus far stuck to the basic game.

Interestingly, the kids are quite adept at playing the basic game.  In fact, my youngest son wins about 50% of the time, and that’s with me playing without any handicaps.  This has certainly made the game more interesting for me, as it is nice to play a game with them and not have to scale back on how I play.  The kids also like it because they have found a game that they can routinely win at.

Fauna - This great game is one of the other SdJ nominees for this year, and I thought it would be good to try with the kids.  However, a number of factors combined to make this a disaster when we tried to play it last week.

First, let me start off by saying how much I like the game.  It is a animal trivia game which rewards educated guessing.  Gameplay is fairly straightforward – in each round, a card is revealed to all players.  The portion of the card that can be initially seen shows an illustration of an animal, its name in German as well as its Latin classification (genus/species).  Additionally, the card tells you how many regions on the gameboard you would find the animal in, as well as what other characteristics (height/length, weight, tail length) that you are trying to guess at.  On your turn, you place a guessing cube somewhere on the board.

The board is split up into a few areas.  The majority is a map of the world, split up into land and sea regions (kind of like a Risk map).  At the bottom, there are three linear scales for height/length, weight, and tail length – and each of these is split up into many different spaces via a semi-logarithmic scale.  So, say that animal is a polar bear.  I might want to place my cube on the Alaska region of the map.  Or I might think that the animal weighs around 800kg, so I might put my cube on the weight scale between 700kg and 1000kg.  Anyways, players place cubes on the board – and then when everyone is done guessing, the rest of the card is revealed – and this portion of the card has the answer key.

Players score points for having their cube in the exact spots as the right answers.  The score lesser points for being directly adjacent (either on the map or on the scales) to the right answer.  The game continues until a player reaches the target number – usually this takes about 6 to 10 rounds in my experience.

The game has been a hit when brought out with adults only, and so I thought that it would go over great with my kids – both of which currently aspire to be zookeepers… However, as I said before, it fell flat. Actually, it was an unmitigated disaster.  Why?

First, the kids simply couldn’t wrap their head around the German on the board and the cards.  Even though I was there to help explain things, the language barrier was simply too much for them at this age.  Unfortunately, there isn’t an English version of the game out yet – so this may prove to be a permanent stumbling block.  Second, even when I got them past the German words, they really struggled with the Metric system.  As the game is produced in Germany, it obviously uses the metric system.  I tried to help the kids by having a paper meterstick (taken from the local IKEA) to give them a sense of scale on the height/length issue – but they still seemed really confused with it all.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, at their age – and despite their interest in animals and zoos – they simply don’t have quite enough knowledge to make educated guesses at animals they didn’t recognize immediately.  Even though I went through and picked out animals that I thought they would have a really good chance at knowing about already (for instance: lions, Emperor penguins, alligators, elephants, and kangaroos – all of which I know I’ve seen them read about), they were all over the place with their guesses.  So, in the end, it just because a totally random game of placing cubes and hoping that they matched the right answers on the card.

Sadly, the kids actually still had a decent time just hoping they put their cubes down in the right place, but it was really painful for me to watch/adjudicate.  I think that this is a game that will remain in the domain of the adults for the time being.  In that group, it is a very well received game that fits nicely into a 30 to 45 minute slot.  If an English version is ever produced, I’ll try it again as they might do a bit better with their own language (And hopefully the English measurement system will be used too!)

Walk the Dogs - Finally, the last game that has recently made it to the table is a SimplyFun game done by Alan Moon and Aaron Weissblum.  I had initially received it as a gift from Alan back when SimplyFun was just getting started.  Frankly, my initial impression of the game was so good that I had kind of forgotten that I owned it.  But, as I was searching the storage shelves for other games to play with the kids – this one pretty much jumped off the shelf into my hands.

The game itself is a modified set collection game.  There are 63 plastic dogs (9 dogs each of 7 types) included in the game, and they are randomly placed head-to-tail in a line to start the game.  On each turn, a player plays one of the three cards in his hand and follows the instructions.  The cards themselves are simple.  Some allow you to collect dogs from the front of the line (1, 2 or 3 dogs depending on the card).  Others allow you to take dogs from the tail end of the line.  A third type of card lets you take the first and the last dog from the line.  As you take dogs from the big line, you put them in front of you.  You can add dogs to the front of the back of your personal line, and your goal is to get similar type dogs next to each other as scoring increases geometrically.  If you have a singleton dog, it scores 1 point, but if you have 2 identical dogs in a row – that group scores 4 points; and 3 identical dogs score 9 points.  Additionally, if you’re able to get 5 of the same type of dog in a row, you automatically win the game.

There are a few special cards such as the leash card which allows you to take a dog from the end of another player.  The Dog Catcher card causes all players to discard the largest group of identical dogs from either end of their line.  These cards give the players some incentive to cover up their dog groupings – making them safe from being taken or discarded, but limiting scoring as it is impossible to add to them any longer.

The kids have really taken to this game, and after playing it (multiple) times this week, it’s actually not as bad as I remember!  The initial attraction was to the plastic dogs, and the kids always have a good time playing with the figures as we get the game set up.  Once we get into the gameplay itself, they have been able to easily grasp the game and the idea of matching the dogs in line. 

It has been interesting watching the kids learn how to manage their risk.  In the first few games, the boys never bothered to try to protect their strings of matching dogs – instead, they wanted to leave open the opportunity to add more dogs on to the chain.  Sometimes this worked, but more often than not, the kids lost their longer strings to the Dog Catcher.  After learning this lesson, they started to appreciate the value of protecting their dogs.  As a result, their overall scores have improved greatly.

In any event, Walk the Dogs is certainly making it to the table more often than any other game right now, and I’m glad that we have found a game that the whole family can play and enjoy.  I will continue to try to bring other “adult” games to the table and see how the kids do with them over the course of the summer… and, of course, I’ll report back here with the results of this grand experiment.

Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor

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