Sorry! is one of those board games that just about any kid will remember playing and never forget as they age through the years. As an adult it feels that Monopoly is too long and too much about commerce, Twister requires all participants to be in good shape, and if you love spell checkers than Scrabble is out. (All three games I will review since we got them as wedding gifts). With Sorry! the game is so easy, it’s hours of fun. And both kids and adults will enjoy it at the same time. Adults won’t feel they are playing a “kid” game just because the kid wants too, and kids won’t feel they are playing an adult game they don’t understand.

The makeup of the Sorry! board is fairly straight forward. Two to four people can play with each player being assigned a color on the board. All pegs are the same except for their color, so you automatically don’t have to worry about a squabble over who wants to be the car or the top hat (I always wanted to be the car in Monopoly!) All pegs begin on the Start circle, and proceed to the Finish circle. Countless squares around a square board await players as they make their way either forward or backwards to their destination.

The game is very easy to play, although for the very young it make take a few turns to catch on. After everyone picks their color and puts their pegs in their starting circle – each person begins to draw a card from a deck that calmly sits in the middle of the board. The deck is made up cards that tell players what to do. Many are simple, like move forward this many spaces or back this many. Others allow more strategic planning in that they allow the player to split moves between two pegs, take one of their pegs out of the starting gate and into play, and/or even swap places with another player’s peg.

The object of the game is to get your same colored pegs from your start circle to the finish circle. In some cases this can be very easy if your lucky. Get your peg out of start, draw a card that makes your peg move backwards a few steps, and then get a card that moves it forward into the finish circle (and to help you out, the first few steps before your Finish circle are labeled a “safety zone” so your peg cannot be touched by another player. But, that’s only if you are really lucky!) Most of the play will be done by slowly moving your pegs around the board hoping that your opponent doesn’t draw a Sorry! card, a card they can use to knock your peg off the board and back to start and place their peg in the spot you once held.

Now, anyone can figure out why this game is fun to play. For one, you get say “Sorry!!!” as you knock someone back to start – but there is always the chance that, the same player you made sorry, will draw a Sorry! card and get revenge. But what about cousin Auntie who is near getting all her pegs to the finish line, shouldn’t you knock her off? Sure, the game could make some families seek revenge on each other – but the beauty of the game is anyone at almost any age could plan out, seek, and avenge. All in the name of good family fun.

For a limited time (as of March 2003) you can find the game Sorry! in a Limited Edition format at your local toy store. The game comes packaged in a rather sturdy wooden box with a lid that slides open to reveal the game board. The board itself is folded in fours with a split down the middle, and the game pieces and the deck of cards fit into designed slots that keep them in place during storage. Other games such as Monopoly, Risk, Scrabble, and Twister can also be found in this packaging, making them easy to stack on top of each other and placed into your game closet.

Sorry! really is a game that anybody can play and enjoy at almost any age. The learning curve is very minimal, as is game time unless players seek to make a particular person sorry more than someone else, that someone else who ends up winning the game by a landslide.

You can’t really go wrong buying this game for your whole family and even if it is just you and your significant other – it makes a great game to play while unwinding from a hard day. If there was only one con that game has, it would be that the play of the game never requires a single player to sit and ponder each move to the point that other players will get annoyed or start to pay more attention to the TV or some other distraction.

Once the game begins you won’t be sorry, unless someone makes you Sorry!




Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 0.00
Type of Toy: Board Game
Age Range of Child: 3 to 5 Years