In Loco Parentis: A Card Game the Whole Family Can Enjoy
Written: Oct 20 '05
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Pros: Easy to learn, quick to play, suitable for kids and adults alike. Fun AND educational.
Cons: Lousy packaging. Serious gamers will lament the heavy luck factor.
The Bottom Line: An engaging social game for adults and educational fun for kids.
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| theeye's Full Review: Loco! card game |
Our household has recently turned into Gaming Central. Those of you who've been following my recent series of game reviews know that our five-year-old son has developed an addiction to games and, in lieu of enrolling him in a Twelve Step program, we've simply decided to feed his gaming appetite, albeit with some judiciously made selections to avoid fatal overdosing.
On our part, that is: a few more months of Chutes and Ladders would have done me in for sure.
Thus we embarked on a project of identifying and acquiring interesting games: games that an adult might willingly play; games with some degree of strategic depth; but also games that a motivated and bright five-year-old could learn, enjoy and successfully play and that would continue to hold his interest for years to come.
The enterprise has been surprisingly successful. Case in point: Loco!, a card game by Fantasy Flight games.
Loco! falls into a sweet spot of game design. The rules and mechanics of the game are simple enough to be mastered within a few minutes by even the youngest gamers and the game itself can be played out within about ten minutes, yet the strategic possibilities are reasonably rich for a game with a significant luck factor and the gameplay is engaging even for adults. Two to five players can play and, while the suggested age range is eight and up, no reading (beyond simple number recognition) is required and the game may well be suitable for some five-year-olds as well.
Deal Me In
The game equipment consists of twenty-five colored chips, five in each of five colors, and a deck of thirty cards, six each in the same colors. Each card is numbered from zero through five; every card thus features a unique combination of color and number.
To play, begin by placing the chips in five unicolored piles in the center of the table. Two or three cards (depending on the number of players) are randomly selected and placed on the side, face down. The remaining cards are dealt out evenly to the players; all hands are kept secret from opposing players.
Play proceeds by turns around the table. At each turn, a player must select one card from his hand and place it, face up, next to the correspondingly colored pile of chips. He then selects and takes one chip of any color from the chip piles.
When placing the second and subsequent card of a particular color, it should be piled on top of prior cards of that color, but placed so as to allow all players to see the previous card values.
The chips a player holds are assigned a point value based on the most recently played card of the corresponding color. Thus, with every turn, all players' scores may adjust up or down. If the red number four card has just been played, every red chip held by any player is worth four points. But if the next player places the red number zero card, each of those chips instantly becomes worthless -- for the moment, at least.
The zero cards are known as Loco! cards and players are required to cry Loco! when playing them; if a player forgets, he forfeits his chance to collect a chip for that turn. (Shades of Uno.) This particular rule is extraneous to the basic play and could be considered an optional 'house rule', popular among the kiddies, but otherwise rather gratuitous.
The game is over as soon as the sixth card of any color is played. Current chip values are toted up and the player with the highest value wins.
The Play's the Thing
While the game can be played with two to five players, we've typically played with three. At that level, the strategic flavor of the game is somewhat reminiscent of Hearts, in that one must carefully consider which cards have been played and infer what cards may be likely to turn up.
The specific strategic considerations, however, are somewhat inverted relative to Hearts. In Loco!, full information about the cards which have been played is always readily available; we forty-somethings don't have to compete against the formidable short-term memory skills of a five-year-old. (Anyone who's ever played a memory game against a kindergartener will appreciate that it's hardly necessary to handicap the kid: they have almost freakish memories.)
On the other hand, in Hearts, one can always rely on the scores increasing monotonically. In Loco!, scores oscillate dizzyingly -- and it's only the final score that matters. Build up a high score based on the current situation and you may find your score suddenly nosediving just as the game comes crashing to a close. Alternatively, a clever player holding a key high card and hoarding the corresponding undervalued chips, if he plays his cards right, may suddenly leapfrog into first place and seal his victory.
The random removal of a few cards from the deck is a crucial element contributing to the appeal of this game. Without this rule, inferences about the cards players must be holding would be too easy. With it, one can never know whether the sixth card of a particular color is being held back by a player or whether it's one of those randomly selected cards just sitting out the hand.
The game does involve a lot of luck, but even a disappointing deal consisting largely of mid-range cards, can be exploited by a clever and attentive strategist. On the other hand, Loco! is very suitable as a casual, social game for adults, played quickly with more focus on fun than on strategy: break it out when you're tired of playing Fluxx. Add a nice bottle of wine to the mix and you have a fun evening activity for serious gamers and dilettantes alike.
Calculating the Kid-Friendly Quotient
If you're planning on including young children, however, there are several points to consider in evaluating a game's appropriateness. The mechanics of the game must be easy enough for them to understand and be able to follow independently. In this regard, Loco! meets the goal admirably. Our son was able to begin playing this game after only a few minutes of explanation.
Loco! also requires no reading, though number recognition is crucial; this ought to be no obstacle to most four- or five-year-olds. The colors are also easy to distinguish, even for our officially color-blind (red-green deficiency) son.
Calculating the scores can pose something of a challenge in Loco!, as the number of chips in play increases. The individual values are all small, but the ability to multiply integers up to five is helpful. This may well be beyond the abilities of most five-year-olds, but it need not be an insuperable barrier to their participation. The scores of each player at any point during the game are readily available to all players, thus the adults can assist in calculating the scores from time to time and in explaining the consequences should any particular card be played next.
Our son is particularly quantitatively inclined for a five-year-old (blame his genes) and seems able to follow the scoring with some assistance from his ever patient parents. In general, I'd suggest that this game could be introduced to a mathematically-inclined child shortly after he or she has been introduced to the concept of multiplication of small integers. Certainly by the officially recommended minimum age of eight, any child ought to be able to participate fully in this game, with perhaps a little adult assistance. And it's a very fun way for kids to practice their multiplication skills. (Just don't tell them that it's educational!)
The strategy is fairly challenging, though, and the often unpredictable twists and turns of fortune may be frustrating for a young gamer whose high score is suddenly nullified by an opponent's cry of Loco!. I would strongly recommend trying ThinkFun's Children's Card Games first and introducing Loco! only once a child seems to be able to handle both Rummy and Hearts without tears. Of course, with full information available about current scores and non-deterministic rules, an accommodating adult player can always choose to give the child an edge if it comes to that.
One final point to consider is that the game does require that a child manage a fairly large hand of cards (in a two person game, each player must hold fourteen cards) and keep them hidden from opponents. This may present some physical challenges to a small child, but it's always possible to allow the child to array his cards out on the table by setting up some sort of screen.
Packing it Up
One of the big advantages of card games over board games is that they are more easily transportable. When traveling, we always try to bring a game or two with us to avoid The Kid's predictable remonstrations: But, Mommy, I only got to play one game today and that's NOT FAIR! (Parents of five-year-olds are always being lectured on the ontological unfairness of life.)
Most card games are nice and compact and easy to toss into a suitcase without taking up much space or damaging the packaging. Unfortunately, the makers of Loco!, after doing such a nice job of designing the rules, failed to devote as much attention to the physical package. (Well, it's better than the reverse, at least.)
Loco! comes packaged in a single box that accommodates both the cards and the chips. The cards are shrink-wrapped and the chips slide in next to the deck in a little cardboard container just perfectly sized to hold twenty-four chips.
That's right: twenty-four chips. The twenty-fifth chip is shrink-wrapped along with the cards. So once you open the shrink-wrapping, that last chip has to rattle around inside the box. And the cards, no longer neatly sealed in plastic, tend to slide around inside the box as well.
If you're planning on taking this game with you on your travels, you'll likely end up rubber-banding the deck and placing it, along with the chips in a Zip-lock baggie. Not the most compact way to carry the game, but the original packaging simply won't do: the chips will get lost and the cards will get bent.
The inadequate packaging is the main reason I rate this game at only four stars: the materials themselves are first-rate and the game design is nicely executed. Loco! is a fun and educational game for kids and a reasonable social diversion for adults as well: I expect that we'll be playing this one for many years to come.
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Additional information and resources:
Manufacturer's product page: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/loco.html
Other recommended card games: Four Children's Card Games, Aquarius, Fluxx
A fun and educational way to keep score for multi-round card games.
Other game reviews: King's Table (A Viking Game), The Game of Chips, Kill Dr. Lucky, DuelMasters, Monopoly
Puzzle games: Rush Hour, Jr., Roadside Rescue
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 8
Type of Toy: Game
Age Range of Child: Whole Family
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Epinions.com ID:
theeye
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Location: New York, NY (it's a hell of a town!)
Reviews written: 66
Trusted by: 165 members
About Me:
Company president, math geek, first time mom at 39, epinion addict. Sleep? Not lately.
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