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With this colorful collection of games, children can play puzzles, roll dice and puzzle over the holidays
Photo:
Diana Doert / DER SPIEGEL
On your marks, get set... eat!
Let's start with a topic that everyone can agree on: It's always good to eat on the holidays!
We need a lot of raspberries to win the game »Ready, steady … eat!«.
And you have to do a lot for these raspberries.
Each round, one player takes on the role of the raspberry hunter.
The hourglass is turned over and time is running from now on.
The raspberry hunter reveals a card and this shows an action that must be completed as quickly as possible.
You may have to rebuild the figure shown with building blocks or roll the dice until the symbol on the card matches that on the dice.
Or maybe you just have to mimic the animal on the card.
And when one of the large wooden animals appears on a card, it's suddenly everyone's turn.
Whoever is the quickest to snatch the animal they are looking for gets the card and thus the raspberry points.
But it is important to know when to stop.
Because if you were too greedy and the hourglass ran out before you called “stop”, you have to give back the beautiful raspberry loot.
Auzou; 2 – 4 players; from 5 years; Author: Roberto Fraga
monster soup
Great, now the monsters are awake and want to eat something too.
Unfortunately, they are extremely short-sighted and only manage to stir together the right ingredients for a delicious soup by skillfully touching them.
jeez
Each monster gets a cloth bag with ten ingredients and a soup pot.
At the beginning of the round, ingredient cards are revealed in the middle of the table.
Each monster must now conjure up the wood ingredients they are looking for as quickly as possible from the bag and put them in the pot - without looking in the bag, of course.
Whoever first thinks they have found all the ingredients they need calls out »monster soup«.
The other monsters must then stop cooking immediately.
For each correct ingredient, the successful monsters get a green (wooden) slime cube in their bag and the next round can start.
Whoever has the most slime cubes when emptying their bag after the fourth round wins.
Schmidt; 2 – 4 players; from 5 years; Authors: Asger Harding Granerud and Daniel Skjold Pedersen
Dali the Fox
Poor fox Dali is completely misunderstood.
He doesn't want to steal the freshly laid eggs from the chickens on the farm.
Well, not for long anyway.
As an artist, it is important to him to paint the beautiful chicken eggs correctly.
What does it look like when they're all just boring white and brown?
Unfortunately, this is only moderately well received by the chickens.
And how does the egg thieving work in a playful way?
When it's your turn, you slip into the role of Dali the fox.
You roll two color and one farmer die.
The color dice indicate which chicken coop door you can open briefly so that a colored egg rolls out.
The pawn die shows which door you must not open under any circumstances.
If you roll two colors that, when mixed together, result in a mixed color, you can also choose the door that corresponds to this color.
If you get an egg, you can roll the dice again - or stop and run away with the loot.
Because watch out!
Don't get too greedy, you can only steal eggs of different colors.
If you haven't rolled a new color, you unfortunately have to leave the stolen goods behind and Dali gets nothing.
Whoever paints ten eggs first wins.
Pegasus; 2 – 4 players; from 5 years; Author: Vincent Bonnard
Exactly
A deck of cards and each of them has two holes - is that supposed to be a game?
A very good one!
While eight different colored circles can be found next to the two holes on the green front, the two holes are mainly visible on the back.
On your turn, you reveal two cards, one face down and one back face up.
Now it has to be estimated which two color circles on the front card correspond exactly to the distance between the two holes on the back card.
This is checked by trying it out.
If you guess correctly, you keep a card as a victory point, if you guess wrong, it is the turn of the next player.
Finally a game where adults can make a fool of themselves.
NSI; 2 – 6 players; from 5 years; Author: Reinhard Staupe
Exit Kids - puzzle fun in the jungle
The successful exit series is about solving many varied puzzles in a certain amount of time in order to win the game in the end.
Game material often has to be bent, cut up and painted.
The children's version isn't that bad.
We discovered an unknown jungle island.
There are even supposed to be treasures to be found here if you just solve the right puzzles.
The 18 jungle animals have prepared various tasks for us.
There are six cards for each type of puzzle, so you can play the game multiple times.
For example, in the hat puzzle you have to find all the animals on the game box that wear the same hat as the revealed animal.
Once you have found the three, the solution disc is adjusted so that these animals are below the associated puzzle.
If you then turn the disc over, you can see in the solution window whether you are correct.
If we were able to solve the riddle, we can take a key tile with which we can turn over a treasure at the end of the game.
Cosmos; 2 – 4 players; from age 6; Authors: Inka and Markus Brand
Minecraft Heroes of the Village
Our Minecraft village needs support.
Ol' Illagers are out to get us again, and if we can't finish three buildings before the bad guys get to the village, we're in for a bad way.
What can we do to prevent the raid?
If we manage to fight the approaching monsters and build buildings together, we might be able to fend off the attack.
After everyone has chosen one of the well-known Minecraft characters and a helpful animal, we start in the middle of the village.
In each turn we must choose two of the four possible actions.
We can discover and expand the world, collect important blocks to build the buildings, fight monsters or construct buildings.
The special abilities of our animal companions are useful for fighting monsters or collecting extra blocks.
If we manage to build the three buildings before those pesky Illagers reach our village, we'll be victorious.
If not, we'd rather play another round.
Ravensburger; 2 – 4 players; from 7 years; Authors: Christian Fiore and Knut Happel
Mystery Kids
Being ghostly is sometimes a nuisance.
A few little people come into your abandoned villa and look for a treasure.
You would like to help them, unfortunately you can't talk to them, after all you're only a ghost, so the communicative options are a bit limited.
Luckily you are very musical and use your tambourine to try to get the mini people on the right track.
In the cooperative game, one person takes on the role of the ghost "Captain Buh" in each round.
The remaining players are the treasure hunters.
In each round, cards are revealed that represent a wide variety of sounds with objects and actions.
"Captain Buh" now secretly draws a card and tries to imitate the noise depicted there with his tambourine.
If the children guess which card it is, they may reveal a treasure tile.
The game ends after five rounds, then the stars on the treasure cards are added up.
Depending on the level of difficulty, you can get up to 13 stars.
dragonfly; 2 – 6 players; from age 6; Authors: Antonin Boccara and Yves Hirschfeld
dice heroes
There's a lot of shady rabble hanging around in the kingdom of Therion.
The Queen has sent her four best squads of heroes to clean up properly.
Surely one or the other lavish bounty helps to motivate the heroes.
First, everyone chooses a group of heroes, choosing between falcons, otters, bears and ibexes.
They all have one thing in common: they fight with dice.
At the start of their villain hunt, they all have three basic white dice available.
Later you can win yellow and red ones and make the "arsenal of weapons" more powerful.
When it is your turn, the villain currently on display is attacked.
The swords on the dice indicate with how many points you want to kill the scoundrel.
You can re-roll the dice a maximum of two times.
Unfortunately, the other heroes then have their turn.
If a troop of heroes manages to surpass the stake, you have to take the dice back.
If no one manages to beat the line-up of weapons before it's your turn again, you may collect the villain and the gold pieces he brings in.
Whoever is the richest at the end of the game wins.
amigo; 2 – 4 players; from 8 years; Author: Richard Garfiled
last message
What a miserable mess!
This place is full of suspects, how are you supposed to find someone?
Very easily!
Two players are selected and sit on one side of the screen, all others take on the role of detectives together and sit on the opposite side.
Both groups have an identical hidden object in front of them.
With the two players, one is the victim and the other the perpetrator.
The victim now uses a mini-magnifying glass to select a person from the hidden object who must be found by the unsuspecting detectives as the culprit.
Each of the four rounds follows the same pattern.
The victim draws clues on an erasable board divided into six rectangles.
However, before the detectives can see this notice board, the perpetrator may erase some of the rectangles on the board by wiping them off.
Since she is allowed to swipe less with each round, the detectives have a chance, with good clues and teamwork, to catch the person they are looking for in the hidden object.
If they succeed within the four rounds, victims and detectives have won.
If not, the perpetrator gets away with it.
IELLO; 3 – 8 players; from 8 years; Authors: Juhwa Lee and Giung Kim
Little Wizards
It's getting late, it's been dark outside for a long time.
How about a trip to the distant world of coins?
Although - this world full of magic and sorcerers' apprentices is not that far away.
Coin world is a flat planet.
While on the one hand the inhabitants of Horn live quite undisturbed on their five islands, on the other hand the inhabitants of Quaste are used to rougher things.
Since you can only get from one side to the other with magic, we've come to the right place.
People on both sides of Coinworld get along quite well and are quite willing to help each other out with problems.
And then there are us witches and wizards with our magic.
We help when it comes to tricky tasks and small adventures on coin world.
»Little Wizards« is a role-playing game for children and contains three ready-made adventures that you can play in one to three hours, even with a completely inexperienced game leader.
Once the little magicians are familiar with the fantastic new world, it will certainly not be the last adventure they have experienced on the world of coins.
green gorilla; 2 or more players; from age 6; Author: Antoine Bauza
available here: https://greengorilla.de/
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