Bananagrams - Cobra Paw - Board Game & Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza - Card Game

Product Information

Family board games with city-building themes can often seem a little overwhelming and perhaps not the most accessible choice for younger audiences - getting your five year old to play Cities: Skylines may be a tad ambitious. However, there ways for less experienced players to bask in the glory of growing their very own metropolis - one of them being the adorable and accessible board game Machi Koro. Bearing an appealingly bright Japanese setting and plenty of elements to excite children - theme parks, bakeries and cheese factories, to name but a few - Machi Koro sees players fulfilling their mayoral duties by attempting to expand the city and support its citizens. Kids just love How to Train Your Dragon, don’t they? And what do those films have apart from dragons? Vikings. Which is why Valley of the Vikings is sure to be a hit with younger audiences. As for adults? Well, bowling seems to be a fairly popular activity regardless of your age and Valley of the Vikings has its fair share of rolling balls.

The first thing you might notice about Slide Quest are the funny little plastic handles attached to each side of the game’s box, these are what the players will be using to move their little hero figure across the board. Unlike in Flip ‘em Up! - another fantastic dexterity board game that involves artful sliding - Slide Quest has its players controlling the board rather than moving the actual character token. Cobra Paw is a super simple, silly fun game. As such, there’s not a lot of depth to it and that’s perfectly okay. Not every game needs to be a heavy brain burner. What irritates me is when a game pretends to be something heavy and turns out to be pure fluff. Cobra Paw is exactly what it advertises itself to be. There’s no pretense here.

It is a frantic game which tests reactions, dexterity with a little bit of memory too. I do find myself getting in a zen-like state as I try and see all the stones rather than flitting from tile to tile. That’s my inner ninja trying to escape. I’m beginning to think I am close to mastering the Cobra Paw! Competitors who continue to play dishonorably may be forbidden from the Cobra Paw tournament and may even be cast into the Litter Box of Shame!

Colourbrain is a very kid-friendly game, but one that'll still give adults a run for their money. The actual nature of it couldn't be simpler - just a series of questions about colours, in which you'll have to spend cards to answer. What colour is Mr Bump? What shade is the lid on a Marmite jar? Are you sure? Think hard, the match might depend on it. What makes Machi Koro such an accessible game beyond the simple dice-rolling mechanic is that it involves absolutely no score-monitoring or point-counting; once someone has successfully constructed every building and landmark in their city then they’ve won. This straightforward approach towards city-building makes Machi Koro a perfect family board game to play with people of every age. Cobra Paw is a very simple game to play. Each tile has two symbols on it corresponding to the symbols printed on the two dice. When the dice are rolled, two symbols will be shown and the players will attempt to be the first to place their fingertip onto the tile that matches the symbols. The person that manages to do this first collects the tile and places it on the table in front of them. Note, it is possible to steal tiles from other people, so it’s up to each player to defend what they’ve already collected!

However, there is a limited number of tiles available and the game ends once a player has successfully created their grid, so everyone is going to have to be on the ball if they want to collect the most points possible. This is what makes Kingdomino a great family board game, as it involves a lot of player interaction and the desired amount of conversation to make for a really fun time for everyone involved.