You may remember a couple of months ago, we reviewed some of the board games in the Ravensburger collection - Asara, Indigo and Labyrinth. Well, when we were invited to try out some more, we didn't hesitate for a second before saying yes. The only thing that was slightly more complicated was choosing which ones to pick - they all sounded great !
In the end we opted for Just In Time. The official blurb says : "Each player tries to find a place for their tiles on their game boards faster then the others. Leaving spaces at the right spots is the trick to this game! You can only get a lot of points when the open spaces display the highest numbers and no tile protrudes! Can you navigate all the challenges just in time?"
In the box, you get 52 tiles (13 of each colour), 40 play boards (10 for each of the four players), 27 challenge cards, a scoring track and an hourglass timer. The boards have animal shapes (or mosaics as the Madhouse Mini-testers have taken to calling them, as they are made up of squares) that you need to recreate using three, four or five tiles (which look like Tetris blocks). A card tells you which tiles you can use, then you have to recreate the animal shape while leaving the number squares visible to get the corresponding points. The first player to finish gets to set the timer marking the end of the other players' turn so it all ends up being a bit fast and furious, much to the kids' delight ! The winner is the player with the highest number of points after ten rounds, so it's not a game that will drag on for too long when you're short of time.
It's a great problem-solving game that will make your kids think, rather than relying purely on luck. I've seen some webstores give it an 8+ and some a 12+ age rating but both 12-year-old Sophie and 8-year-old Juliette are quite capable of playing, even if Juliette needs to work on her strategy skills a little for maximising points. When the nights start drawing in and the beautiful summer weather comes to an end, this is definitely a game that we'll be playing a lot more.
star rating : 4/5
RRP : £19.99
Disclosure : We received the game in order to write an honest review.
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Sounds perfect for a Christmas stocking filler.
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