Magick1's Full Review: Hasbro Littlest Pet Shop Hideaway Haven
My daughter recently had her 6th birthday and she had a great little party and invited some friends. One item she received is this board game. This is a board game produced by Milton Bradley and it’s intended for younger kids. The manufacturers recommend ages 6 and up. I agree. I wouldn’t recommend anything below age 6! Some games over estimate the players or the ease of the games, this one I think is just right!
The Product
This game mixes up a bit of memory where the user has to search for items, recall where they were and to get the items for their player card. Each player picks a card that is a small rectangle shaped piece with 4 animals on it. Each animal comes from 1 of the 4 colored sections of the board game. There is dark minty green, salmon pink, sky blue and sunny yellow section.
Each section has 8 squares that match 8 cards that you have to shuffle out and put upside down on the playing “field”. There are 4 animals that you put into each of the board’s corners and the Littlest Pet Shop characters are as follows: St. Bernard dog, Dragonfly, a grey tiger striped cat and a little purple ferret.
You have a spinner that you spin to find out which animal you move and how many spots. You have to move that particular animal around the board, land on a spot and look at the item underneath the card. If it matches a piece on your player card, you keep it and look for the other 3 matches. If it does not, you show others playing with you, and if they need it, they need to remember where it was and get to it on their turn to complete their player cards first.
You cannot move diagonally only up and down, left and right. The rules say you can move up to the number spun, but you don’t have to move all of the way. So, if you spin tiger cat for 5 spaces and you only need to move 3 spaces to get your player card item, you only move 3 spaces.
There are some trick cards in the game that if landed on, you have to move all of the animal pawns back to their original starting position, just to mix up things. The dragonfly allows you to buzz around wherever you need to go. Hopefully, your spinner lands on that one and hopefully, you recall what square you need to land on to collect your player card animal!
The trick is, once you have retrieved all of your special player card animals and you are ready to win the game, you have to get an animal on the spinner and land that animal on the same square on the board with the dragonfly. Then you need to spin that spinner again and it has to match the animal that you moved to the dragonfly’s square.
(I personally have to refer back to the instructions every time we play to remember the order of what you must do to win. I KNOW that you have to have your player card filled out and you have to get an animal moved onto the dragonfly’s square, but never can recall exactly what you have to do to win, correctly!)
Overall Impressions
While Littlest Pet Shop lovers will enjoy this game, kids playing it don’t really want to keep the animals inside the game box. They want these animals to play with outside of the game which if not put away immediately creates a problem when they are ready to play the board game and there are no animals to move around the board!
The game is fun and truly not terribly hard to play, but there are some instructions that maybe could have been thought out a little better to make it easier for the 6 year old group to understand. Right now, we adults have to refer back to the instructions each time we play to ensure we all are doing it correctly.
Game play usually isn’t too bad lasting roughly 20 minutes or so (give or take 5 – 10 minutes here and there). We have had quick games lasting barely 15 minutes when everyone hits their animals, collects them quickly and gets the dragonfly. Then, we have had games where everyone struggled to capture their animals for their player car and it lasted upwards of 35 minutes. So, it can vary somewhat.
It’s a sturdy game. The animal “memory” cards that you put on the board are a thicker cardboard stock and the spinner is of a cardboard stock as well. My daughter really enjoys playing it and loves the Littlest Pet Shop animals too, so it was a perfect gift. Now, if we can just understand it better and not have to refer back to the instructions, we will have it made!
If you know of a Littlest Pet Shop lover that doesn’t have this game, it would be a treat to pick it up for them. They will enjoy it. Have fun playing games with the entire family!
~Thank you for spending time with me today!~
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): gift Type of Toy: Board Game
Age Range of Child: 6 to 8 Years
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