THINK2MASTER Animal Kingdom Info Quest Educational Card Game - Perfect for Boys, Girls, Kids, Classroom, Friends and Families to Have Fun While Le...

The 4-year-old in the house loves to learn about animals and we have been discussing whether each animal classifies as a mammal, fish, reptile, etc., so I thought she would really enjoy these cards. I figured she would just sit around looking at the pictures and reading all of the facts about each animal, but I wasn't sure if the game part of it would work. She does, in fact, love to read all of these facts over and over again, but all of the kids have enjoyed playing the game as well. We have modified the game slightly to give the youngest children a chance to enjoy playing as well, but once we get the hang of it, it will be a great speed game. For the game you deal each player a certain number of animal cards (depending on amount of players) face up and the goal is to be the first to flip over all of their cards. Everybody will then take turns playing an action card. These cards typically pick one of the facts about the animals (ex- has feathers) and allow 4 of those animal cards to be flipped over. The trick here is that it is 4 cards total for the whole group, so you want to be the first to flip over as many of yours as you can. This is where really knowing these facts will come in handy. If you don't know them right away, you will need to look at the information on the cards, which takes extra time. We have modified it to make it a slower game. We say which action card we will play (ex- 4 cards of animals that are 12 inches or shorter) and make sure everybody knows where to look on their cards for that information and then say "go" to start that round. Also, we do not flip them over, but instead put them face up in the middle. This allows us to easily see when the fourth card has been placed and to call out anybody who may have played the wrong card. Once we are all in agreement that the 4 cards played qualify, we flip them over and set them aside. There are some other action cards in the deck that allow you to do things like, switch all of your face up cards with another player's face up cards, steal one of their action cards or take an action card from the discarded pile. There are times in the game when you are left with action cards that will not benefit you at all, but may allow another player to win, so you have the option to not play a card that round.These cards are very durable and brightly colored. We love looking at all of the animal pictures and reading through some of the facts about them. I like the variety of animals included. You have a lot of animals that everybody knows and even some less common animals. The game is pretty fun and educational too. I love that I was easily able to amend it for the younger children, so that it has been fun for all of the kids to play together. The only thing I didn't like about this game is that the box to keep the cards in is a perfect fit. This makes clean up more difficult, but it is similar to most other card game boxes. I changed out the box to make it easier for the youngest to pull them out and put them away anytime. Whether you want to use this as a game or as flashcards, I think this is a good addition to the game closet. I would especially recommend this one to any animal lover out there.

great education tool that is also alot of fun

I got this game for playing it with my 9-year old son since we enjoy card games & he likes animals, & I try to find some enjoyable "educational" games for us to play together where he hopefully learns some new things (& I hopefully do as well!) It's a quality game...the cards are durable, sturdy, & laminated/glossy, so they even can take getting a drink spilled on them. The animal cards are very colorful & informative, but there's so much information on the cards that I think it may be a bit much...it's like there's almost too much "little bits" of info/stats on the animal cards for a child to focus on & find what they're looking for on the cards until they play the game a bunch of times & get used to where all of the info is placed on the cards. (This game is definitely for kids who have a good grasp on reading, just fyi.) It's somewhat interesting info on the cards, but after awhile it gets kind of boring just learning the same type of repetitive, basic things/stats about the animals...like "max speed," "max lifespan," "max weight," "max size," & if they're warm-blooded or cold-blooded, etc. There's only ONE interesting "sentence" type of fact on each card per animal. The rest of the info on the cards are mostly just basic "stats" really, which may not hold some children's interest level for real long. My son seemed to get kind of bored with the game after a bit (& so did I honestly) after just a couple plays of the game while we were getting the hang of its gameplay/instructions. I personally would've preferred to have more unique, "sentence" type of facts about the animals on the cards, which would've been more memorable than mostly just "statistical" type of facts/data. The stats are neat to know, but after we looked at & discussed a handful of the animal cards during the game, I could start to see my son's face glazing over with boredom after hearing me say so many times "Oh look how long this animal gets"...or "Look how fast/slow this animal is." After awhile I have to admit I got bored of the SAME stats too on all the animal cards & just "hunting" on the cards for which ones "match" the action cards to flip over. The game was a little complicated for my son to follow at first as well, with all of the different action, swap, steal, etc cards (since I think it was more reading than he cared to do for just a game lol, despite him having good reading skills) & it didn't seem to make much sense for us to be turning over 4 cards at a time which makes the game end pretty quickly if you aren't playing it with a lot of players. So it would frustrate my son for the game to suddenly be over so quickly & he'd feel like he didn't hardly "have a chance to win" if I was the one who won that round. The game just seemed short & kind of disjointed/awkward to me at first also...I think it's a game you have to play/practice a few times until you get the hang of it & I think it's better/longer with more players. But it's like you have all of these animal cards with all of this info on the cards, but the game isn't about "learning" the info on the cards really...it's pretty much just hunting for a piece of info on the cards & then turning it over if your card matches what info is supposed to be turned over....(like if you have any animal cards that live in a certain biome, then you turn those cards over.) It feels like they just took a bunch of animal flashcards & tried to make some kind of "game" out of it by just flipping over a bunch of cards repeatedly. I was stopping us during each turn to actually look at/read the info on the cards for us to learn something about the animals, but then my son would get frustrated that was slowing the game down....but to me, just hunting for a piece of info on a card to turn it over isn't really much of a "learning/educational" game. These would be more useful using them as flashcards for a child to learn from, but then using them that way isn't really a fun "game" either. Overall, while the cards are definitely quite colorful, informative, & quality and the game is different/unique & isn't too bad of a game to play, I don't think it will be one of our favorites. Maybe once we play it more, we'll enjoy it more. :) I think perhaps it may be better when played with multiple players instead of just 2 players. I gave it 4 stars since other people may enjoy this game more than we have so far & since the game/cards are quality made & colorful & informative with the stats. :)