
I’ve played plenty of games here setup time is far longer, but when it comes to something this small and aimed at a younger audience it’s a little different. Either way, by time the board is laid out the kids may potentially already have lost interest already. Now if you have a few adults together who can pitch in and help then great, but with a kid or two it can become a bit of a drag because they’ll inevitably either mess it all up or demand you do it instead. The setup is a bit of a pain in the backside, though because the “board” is made up of tiles that you shuffle together and then place side by side, alternating between rows of eight and rows of seven. In that capacity I think that this truly is a superb little game, balancing out accessibility with tactical thinking. As an avid lover of board games I’m hoping Hey, That’s my Fish will serve as an excellent way to eventually move her into even more awesome games. However, it will serve as a great gateway game as time goes on, the easy to understand rules letting her get a grip on how she can muck up an opponent’s plans by moving around. Not that surprisingly Hey, That’s my Fish was not appreciated by the child as much as Dobble, the much more exciting and intense game which was constantly requested. Like Dobble I enlisted the aid of my little niece and her grandma to play the game. We busted it out in a pub at one point, merrily doing battle with our tiny squads of penguins as bemused patrons watched on, presumably wondering what the hell we were drinking. To my surprise quite a few of my friends were happy to use Hey, That’s my Fish as a warmup before engaging in bigger games. Everybody wins, then.Īrguably that’s what’s most impressive about the game, though, the fact that it can appeal to both adults and children alike.
#HEY THATS MY FISH GAME PLUS#
Kids, meanwhile, as said can enjoy just darting around, plus they’ll invariably end up trapping people purely by luck, giving them a fun moment as the adult they are playing against groan in frustration. Don’t be surprised to find people focusing too much on one or two of their penguins and accidentally cutting one of their own team off in an embarrassing display of poor spatial awareness. It makes the race to grab those precious three fish tiles more interesting, especially in the late stages of the game where a lot of the glacier has been removed, leaving everybody to seriously contemplate every move they make because it not only affects the opponent but affects them too.

With these basic rules in play you can block opponents, hem them in and cut off their access to the glacier. Any penguin that gets stuck and can’t move because they’ve found themselves floating on a small piece of ice is removed from the game, taking the tile they’re standing on with them. Meanwhile adults can stop and ponder how the ever-shrinking board provides plenty of tactical choices for blocking opponents. Kids can just jump their penguins back and forth across the glacier, grabbing fish where they can without ever considering what they’re really ding. It’s a simple ruleset that can be explained to adults and children alike in mere minutes, and yet there’s surprising depth hidden within them. There’s only two other rules that you need to be aware penguins can’t move past another penguin that’s blocking their path, and they can’t move across open water, either, which is to say an empty space on the board. Once you’ve moved you snatch up the tile you were initially standing on, nabbing yourself however many fish were pictured on it in the process.
#HEY THATS MY FISH GAME CRACK#
It’s a fight for dominance as the playing area shrinks with every move made.Įach turn you select one penguin from your crack team of tuxedo-wearing professionals and can move him/her as far as you want in a straight line across the board, which is made up of 50 hexagons. The idea is straightforward enough you take control of a small crack team of penguins and must race to acquire as many fish as possible while the glacier collapses around you and the other players try to do the same. So what happens when you take those cute little blighters and whack them into a simple kids boardgame? Penguins are naturally funny little chaps, the source of endless amusement for kids and adults alike as they waddle around the ice in their little tuxedos. Designed by: Alvydas Jakeliunas and Gunter Cornett
