Skillmatics Card Game - Dino Trio, A Smart Swapping Dinosaur Themed Strategy Game for Kids, Teens & Adults...

Played the game with a 8 and 6 year old! Great fun!

The 6 year old did well though didn't quite get the concept of the earth quake card.

As an adult boardgame enthusiast, I can say that this is not a good game. The whole appeal is the dinosaur theme, and if you have dino loving kids, this may be for them. But for me, there are a couple of glaringly obvious design flaws. The first is that there are no rules prohibiting one from swapping a game card for a different copy of that card, both can have the exact same trait. The bigger deal is that at lower player counts it is very common to get to a game state where no amount of swapping cards in players' hands can even possibly lead to any player claiming a dinosaur from the center. And yet this state persists until all players choose to pass their turn. This not only means that the game stalls out, it also means that there is a strategic incentive to avoid being the last one to pass your turn, as other players will get a crack at the new cards first. Thus you are encouraged to leave the game in a stalled state. This would be easy to fix by using a standard drawing mechanic or by having the central trait or dino cards automatically swap in and out every so often, but that would have required a competent game designer or meaningful playtesting. But this does have a 24 unique dinosaurs and you kids will learn their size, time periods, and diets playing this. So while I think it's t lousy game, it's at least a reasonable dinosaur educational experience

My almost 5 year old grandson LOVES Dinos and this is rated for ages 5-99, so I thought I would give it a go. It took me at least 5 times reading the directions to even get a beginning grasp of this game. So I dealt out the cards to 3 imaginary players and got to playing, just to test it out. It was still confusing and I had to keep going back to read the directions. I will be playing this in a different way with my little guy. We will deal out the cards and just talk about the Dinos. He knows so much already as he wants to be a Paleontologist when he grows up :). Maybe when he gets older this will seem like a fun game. The other thing about younger players is usually they absolutely hate to loose and have to learn the concept of fair play and being happy for the winner even if it isnt you. I cant imagine that this game would be any different in that respect and it just feels to me to be overwhelming to learn this game and to learn fair play at the same time. We are new to board and card games so maybe this is just my experience. This game is way more about strategy than it is about the dinosaurs. Ill take a pass on this game.except he will love learning more about the actual dinosaurs.

My 8-year old son likes dinosaurs & we enjoy playing games together often, especially card games, so I thought I'd give this game a try! We like it so far & I really like & appreciate that it's also a bit of a dino teaching tool with the dinosaurs names on each card, & whether they're a carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore, & which period they lived in. It takes playing it a few times to get into the groove of playing it & you'll have to help a younger child along through the game as they learn how to play it, but I like that it's different than the other card games we have & that it has dinosaurs we're familiar with which are favorites of my son's, but it also has ones we hadn't heard of yet, which is great! :) And the dinosaur illustrations on the cards are very realistic-looking & it's fun to check out each dinosaur & its name (that's the first thing we did when we opened it!) And me & my son both appreciate that they show on each card how to pronounce each dinosaur's name to make it easier for him (and for me, since who decided to make dinosaurs names so long anyhow?? lol) I think it's a cool dino card game for kids/parents to play together & my only suggestion would be if the other cards (besides the dinosaur cards) would've been more colorful like the dinosaur cards are. Overall, it's a nice dino card game that also teaches a bit about dinos, which is an added plus!! :)