Tag: Family Game

Tension

Birthday Gifts, Children, Christmas, Family Life, Games, Learning, Toys

Disclaimer: We received this game free of charge for the purpose of this review but all words and opinions are our own.

This week is International Games Week, so why not join in the fun this weekend and play a board game with your family?

We love board games and this week we have been playing Tension – the Top Ten Naming Game from Cheatwell games. It is recommended for ages 8+ and is played in teams.  

There is nothing worse than opening a game and spending 15 minutes or more setting it up – especially on Christmas day, so I was very impressed with Tension as it can be played pretty much straight away – the only setting up involved was a quick read of the rules and then we were ready to go. It took longer choosing the teams than it did to understand the rules – always the sign of a good game!

Once you have decided your teams then you choose a player to ask the questions (or you can keep swapping – especially if you are playing at Christmas with lots of children) they pick a card and ask the other team to name 10 things that are …….. Italian cities, actors who have played Doctor Who, popular Disney characters etc. The timer is turned and everyone in the team shouts out the answers. It sounds easy but the twist is you need to come up with the ten answers that are on the card to gain points. There is a handy scorer which makes it easy to keep track of correct answers.

There are orange and purple cards and the card you select is determined by the coloured circle on the board. The orange cards tend to be easier so when we have been playing with younger children we tend just to choose these so that they can come up with answers, but if you have older children or are playing it with adults you can play based on where your counter lands.

Once the minute is up the correct answers are counted and the team move their counter forward this number of places. The first team to reach the finish space wins the game.

With Christmas fast approaching it is the perfect game to play as everyone can join in, we’ll be playing it with 3 generations of our family and with 400 topics it will be a great way to keep the children off electronics over the Christmas period!

RRP £12 from Tesco

Spot The Intro Board Game

Birthday Gifts, Children, Christmas, Family Life, Games, Gifts for Her, Gifts for Him, Gifts for teachers

The Original Music Recognition Game

The board game Spot The intro has been around for a while but this updated version uses the internet for the songs rather than a CD.

The aim of the game is to recognise the song with just the intro, but you are against the clock to name it in time and gain points. The team who make it ‘Top of the Hit Parade’ wins.

This new version, which is for ages 14 and over, has QR codes for each category which takes you to a Spot The Intro page on your phone where you see a specific song.  Using the cut and paste function, you then move into which ever music app or streaming app you use and find the song to play it.  The page supports all the major music players online such as Amazon, Apple, Spotify and even YouTube.

There are 1,200 tunes within the game and that includes TV theme tunes, film scores and of course, songs from the past 60 years. Each track has a trivial question to answer too.

The concept of the game is great – it’s every music lover’s dream game and very entertaining at Christmas. However, it does get a bit fiddly with having to scan each QR code, then go and copy and paste the song. If you don’t have streaming apps and are just using a YouTube account, it can take even longer and of course, if you don’t have a smart phone you can’t use this version at all! I think I preferred the CD version for a few years back, although I’m not sure many of us have CD players around anymore!

The game is for more than 2 teams to play and over the age of 14. The songs go back to the 1960s though so you might want to mix up the teams a bit so that there’s more historical coverage.  The game is great for after dinner as it’s not too long, depending on how many players you have.

As far as novelty value, it’s great fun playing a board game that isn’t just two dimensional and can involve the whole family!

Spot The Intro available at Amazon for £13.74:

Top It Board Game Review

Birthday Gifts, Children, Christmas, Family Life, Games, Learning

Disclaimer – we received this game for the purpose of the review but all thoughts and opinions are our own.


Does anyone else look forward to winter and cosy nights in playing board games with friends and family? My family certainly does, and it certainly wouldn’t be Christmas if Father Christmas didn’t leave a new board game alongside his empty beer glass and cake crumbs!

This year we will be playing Top It from Cheatwell Games, it is the perfect game to play at a family get together and can be played by 2+ players. It does say it is suitable for ages 10+ but we played it with our 7-year-old nephew and he was able to come up with plenty of answers but it does depend on the child – you can always select a different question to give them a little help.

The game is packaged in a carboard box and inside the box are
• 75 double sided Top It Topics Cards
• 60 Top It Cones
• 18 Letter Discs
• Sand timer
• Score Pad
• Pencil

It’s easy to play – each player is given 10 cones and then 9 letter discs are placed on a table and finally a topic card is selected.

The timer is turned and then the fun begins! Players shout out an answer that not only fits the topic but also starts with one of the 9 letters on show, they then place their cone on that letter. However, this is where the fun starts – if another player comes up with something starting with the same letter after you, they can then Top-It with their own cone.

It quickly becomes very competitive as the cones stack up, but only the last cone counts, winning all the points! The topics are quite wide and it was quite astounding hearing the items my family came up with to suit the topics. When “Things found in a garden!” came up my son shouted out “treasure chest” I’ve been searching our garden all week but I haven’t found it yet!!!!

This is a great game and a fun way to bring the all the family together this Christmas

RRP £26.99 available from Amazon