games Archives - What Luke Did Next...and What Lottie Loves

World Tetris Day!- Tetris Dual Review

Posted on June 6, 2018 by whatlukedidnext@gmail.com

Did you know it’s World Tetris Day today?!

We have been celebrating with a game of Tetris Dual this evening which my best friend and his brother have recently been reviewing for us. I really liked the look of Tetris Dual– it’s a strategy game for two people and it’s based on the original Tetris computer game. You can play in two different ways- either as a speed game or a countdown game. You get a light up game grid connected to an electronic display which shows you which shape piece you have to play next and all the pieces in two different colours, you drop the pieces into the grid to try and block your competitor. You also need to score the most points possible by matching your colours, or even better making a row before pressing the button and passing the turn back to the other person.

Lottie and I have really enjoyed playing the game, it’s been great fun and is quite challenging. Our friends loved testing it too, we all liked the fact that it’s a game you have to think about, my friend said he and his brother liked trying to beat the clock to complete their turn. We all thought it was very straightforward to set up and although the instructions seemed a bit complicated it was actually very easy to understand how to play once we got going.

My friend’s little brother is the same age as my sister Lottie and they both found it a bit tricky to start with to work out the best way to use shapes to make a row and not leave any gaps but they soon worked it out (and now Lottie likes making shapes and rows even when we are not actually playing!) Tetris Dual is really good for getting your brain working and thinking a bit ahead.

Their Mum said there was a lot of giggling and that it was good family fun! We have found it the same and my Mum likes that Lottie and I can just go off and play together without arguing over this game which isn’t always the case!

My friend said he would like the grid to be a bit bigger but his brother wouldn’t change anything about it at all. The only small issue we have had is that you can’t take it apart again so you can’t store it easily in it’s box but this isn’t a big problem.

We all rated this game really highly- it’s looks like Ideal have created another good game in Tetris Dual, we think it is suitable for age 6 plus with someone to help guide them to start with or for age 8 upwards, it is a game grown ups would enjoy too.

Lottie has been having a sneaky play with the shapes before our game!

Enter our competition for your chance to win a game of Tetris Dual to challenge your own family too!

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Disclaimer: We were sent a copy of the game but all thoughts and opinions are our own. Please note the post contains an affiliate link, should you choose to purchase through this Lottie and I will receive a small amount of commission at no additional cost to you.

Lexicon-Go Review

Posted on May 20, 2018July 3, 2018 by whatlukedidnext@gmail.com

We have been enjoying playing Lexicon-Go the past few weeks. If you haven’t seen it then it’s a word game where you start with ten letter tiles each and then have a pile to swap one from. Everyone creates a word either using their tiles or swapping one of the tiles from the swap pile, (you have to shout SWAP as you do it) or by attacking another players word by either adding to it or swapping a letter. You can’t actually change the order of the letters but you can add it new ones or add an ending, so adding ‘er’ or ‘ing’ can work well for this, but if you swap letters out you need to take the letter out from the ones you have swapped back into your pile so it counts as part of your score.

If you manage to get rid of all your letters first then you shout LEX-GO and win that round if all your words are correct. The first player to win 5 rounds in total is the winner. There is a longer version of the game you can also play where at the end of each round the other players add their score on the leftover tiles together, if it is over 100 then they are out straight away and the others carry on until only one person who is left and then the last person left in is the winner but we have been playing the quick Lexicon-Go version as that works really well for us.

We like that Lexicon-Go is a fast and noisy game, we liked shouting out and racing each other. We have enjoyed that it doesn’t take ages and ages to play and that it makes you think. Sometimes it is the luck of which letters you get to start with but mostly it’s about how quickly you can see what you have and think about how or where you can use it. This game also makes you think about how words work and the best way to change them and make them into something else.

I liked the tiles as they seem like they will last well, we did think the instructions seemed quite complicated to start with but we soon got into it once we started playing and it made much more sense as we were going along. Because it is a word game you need to be quite good at spelling and coming up with ideas so I would say it is probably best for children age 8 plus but it does help you learn so children age 6 plus would also enjoy it against children of the same age.

It’s a good game because it is very portable- it’s quite a small case and all zips away nicely and we have taken it with us to play on our trip to the Isle of Wight and our stay in France. It’s good because you don’t need to take lots of extra things with you to be able to play- although if you are like us you might need a dictionary to avoid arguments about whether the random letters someone tried to put down are real words!

Lottie Loves… Rubik’s Junior Animals

Posted on April 12, 2018 by whatlukedidnext@gmail.com

By Lottie age 6 with help from Mum!

My big brother, Luke, has a Rubik’s cube, it’s really hard to do and I get very cross with it when I can’t make the colours match up- although I do like to mess it up when he has been trying to do it!

I have been having lots of fun playing with the new John Adams Rubik’s Junior toys. They are all shaped like animals and are really cute! They are the same bright colours as the cubes but they are just right for younger children to play with. You just twist them up to make it as difficult as possible and then you solve the puzzle and get the animal back to it’s normal shape.

We were sent one of each of the toys from the John Adams Rubik’s Junior range– a bunny, a puppy, a kitten and a bear. They were all really sweet and my little brother Sam decided he would really like the blue puppy (well it was all blue until we twisted it!). I picked the bunny and we decided to give the bear and the kitten to my best friend and her little sister.

It’s National Pet Month so while we have just been enjoying playing with our Rubik’s pets, my friend and her sister have been showing theirs off to their lovely dog, Poppy. They have been enjoying cuddling up with Poppy while they solve the puzzle, it’s a great toy to sit and play with when everyone else is busy and you want something fun to do.

We have all loved playing with our Rubik’s Junior toys– they are really hard to put down and I have shown mine to lots of other friends who all had fun solving the puzzle. It is much less frustrating for children my age than trying to do a cube but it is still interesting enough to keep you busy. My little brother is very nearly three and he loves playing with his puppy version, it’s a bit tricky for him if we twist it too much but he has lots of fun twisting and turning it and just playing with it in his games, I think he will be able to do it really well soon. I think the Rubik’s Junior toys are perfect for children between about 4 and 9, although Luke keeps taking it to play with too and he is 10!

We are very excited to be able to give away one of these fantastic Rubik’s Junior pets to two lucky winners worth £9.99 each thanks to John Adams and Playtime PR

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Please note prizes will be sent out directly within 28 days of the winners providing us their delivery address.

Disclaimer: We were sent the Rubik’s Juniors range in exchange for a review but all thoughts and opinions remain our own.

Please be aware this post contains affiliate links, if you choose to purchase through this this would enable Luke and Lottie to earn a small amount of commission at no additional cost to yourself.

What’s in the Box? – Cheatwell Games Review

Posted on March 11, 2018March 12, 2018 by whatlukedidnext@gmail.com

We love this game. We have reviewed some great games recently including the brilliant new memory game, Baffled, from Cheatwell but their game What’s in the Box? is our current favourite. We like it because you don’t need to spend ages setting it up and you can play it with just two people or the whole family – it’s a brilliant idea for a quick game on a school night when you don’t have a lot of time.

What’s in the Box? doesn’t take up much room in the games cupboard- it’s a nice wooden box with a slide off lid and then inside it is a marble and counter and some cards.

One way to play is to send one player off to get something interesting to put in the box and then the other players count down 21 questions using the marble and counter to try and guess what’s in the box. You are allowed to have a shake if the box keeper says you can but you have to be careful with your questions though- the person hiding the item can only answer yes, no or maybe! We ask lots of questions like ‘do you find it in the bathroom’ to narrow it down before starting to guess. You can only have a couple of guesses and get it wrong before you are out though so guess carefully! You have two ‘take a guess cards’ to hand in and when these are up you can’t guess any more- unless you win back a take a guess card by asking three questions in a row that are answered with a yes. If the counter gets down to 0 then the box keeper who hid the item is automatically the winner of that round.

I bet if Lottie knew there was a chocolate bar in here she would guess quicker!

The other way to play is to use one of the picture cards to put in the box- these are brilliant because it means you can put things in the box that would never fit otherwise like a bench or skies and it makes the questions much more interesting.

We like the fact that you can either play a quick round or a full game. What’s in the Box? is good for getting your mind working and you thinking in a different way. It works well with children from around age 5 upwards and both Lottie and I have been really enjoying it.

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We were sent What’s in the Box for review purposes thanks to Cheatwell Games and Playtime PR but all thoughts and opinions are our own.

Please note this post contains affiliate links

Baffled Game Review

Posted on March 11, 2018 by whatlukedidnext@gmail.com

If you have been reading our blog for a while you will know that we all enjoy our family game nights so we were pretty excited when Cheatwell Games sent us a couple of new games to try.

Baffled is a new memory game but it’s great for all the family because it is designed so adults and children both have an equal chance of winning. It is for children age 8 plus and can be played with two to four players

Baffled is quite tricky but also really good fun. You get 60 seconds to remember the order of the 12 tiles which have pictures on but they can be moved around and change position which makes it more of a challenge.

You get 28 life cards, 12 picture tiles, 12 covering pieces and four counters and a dice to play with. Before you start playing Baffled you have to decide how many lives each person gets, you can have up to seven, you can decide if you want to give the younger players extra lives but it’s up to the people playing the game to decide.

To start playing you put the tiles onto the letter sections, let everyone looks at them for 60 seconds before covering them up with the covering pieces. You then take turns to roll the dice and move your counter around the board. You are still trying to remember the tile positions but this becomes more difficult as the tiles move around. When you land on a square you might have find a specific symbol, name what is on a certain letter space or find three things from a group. You have to say what you are revealing before you do it and if you get it wrong you loose a life.

Sometimes you land on a square that tells you to move the tile from one place to another and you have to swap things about which makes it even harder to remember where things are. The winner is the person at the end of the game who still has the most lives left when the others have run out. There is a chance to win back lives you have lost so you can keep playing right up until you have completely run out.

We took a few minutes to get going with Baffled as we weren’t quite sure that we knew what we were doing until we had had a few turns but actually once it got going it was very straightforward to play even though it was tricky at times. It’s a fun game for everyone and quite a challenge, I think it will help make your brain and memory work while having fun! The second time we played we gave everyone the same number of lives as even though she was younger it looks like Lottie had the best memory out of all of us!

Thanks to Cheatwell Games and Playtime PR for sending us Baffled for review purposes, all thoughts and opinions are our own.

Please note this post contains affiliate links

Family Game Night- Quick thinking with Think Words

Posted on January 15, 2018March 6, 2018 by whatlukedidnext@gmail.com

We have been enjoying our family games nights again the last few weekends and last week tried out Think Words by John Adams.

This game is aimed at age 8 plus but we all had lots of fun playing it together and whilst Lottie needed a few more seconds she didn’t find it too difficult most of the time.

In the Think Words box is 80 cards and a spinner with all the instructions you need. You get a choice of 7 different versions to play so this can keep you busy for ages! Each card has a large letter on one side and four different coloured categories on the other. We started off with the straightforward game of putting 8 letter cards around the spinner and taking turns to spin it, the first person got the colour and everyone had to try and think of a word for that letter from the colour category that it matched- if you were the first one to shout it out then you got to win that letter, at the end of the game the person who had the most letters was the winner.

We liked the fact there were so many different ways to play and that you could also make your own rules as well. Lottie did find a few of the categories a bit hard but I think the age rating of 8 is about right.

Think Words is a good game to take away with you too as it packs up small, we took it to our friends at Christmas which was fun- we liked that you could play it just as well with 2 players as you could 8- although it turns out it is perhaps best not to make up your own rules with 8 people as it can lead to arguments! Even with a bit of bickering this the game was really funny especially when you were trying desperately to think of an answer really quickly.

The only little slightly bad thing we found with this game is that it doesn’t store very well in the box (it’s got a cut out bit to display the cards) and we had to find a different little box to store it in nothing too bad but worth being aware of so you don’t loose your cards!

I am looking forward to playing with some other friends after school next week- although I will steer clear of making up my own rules so we are all still friends at the end of it!

Disclaimer: We were sent the Think Words Game to review but all thoughts are our own, you can keep up with the latest from John Adams Ideal Games by following their Facebook page here

Family Game Night- Fun with Telestrations

Posted on January 13, 2018March 6, 2018 by whatlukedidnext@gmail.com

Now that Christmas is over we have started up our family games night again on a Saturday evening, We make sure we have plenty of snacks and drinks ready and get set up for a fun night. The other week we played Telestrations by John Adams for the first time. I had seen the adverts for it and thought it looked fun so was excited to give it a go. Initially the instructions seemed a little bit complicated but we soon got to grips with it and were drawing our pictures and passing our books on over and over again and it was actually really easy.

Telestrations is for age 8 plus so we added a bit of extra time for Lottie to do her drawings because she is younger and we let her pick the colour topic for the drawings as some were a bit complicated for her to understand but otherwise just got on with it.

You pick a colour on the card and everyone writes that word on the first page of their book (they have already put their name in it) and then you set the timer and begin drawing the word. When the timer rings you pass your book to the next player whether you have finished drawing or not. They then get a certain time to try and guess what they think you have drawn. They write their best guess on the next page before passing it on to the next player. The book then gets passed to the next player who reads the guess and draws what they see that guess as before their time runs out. Finally you pass it back to the original player who gets to see what the last drawing is and what people have guessed their original artwork to be. This is where it gets really funny- some of the guesses are no where near the original drawing- it’s a bit like playing a drawing version of the game where you whisper and see what the person at the end of the circle hears and it is even funnier.

You then rub out the drawings and start all over again with a new card. I like the way it is all reusable and you can play over and over again without wasting loads of paper.

I don’t think you have to be good at drawing to play this game. In fact it’s funnier if you are not. I think this will be a brilliant game to play after a family dinner and is good to play with lots of people. It’s a great game because people of all ages can play it together and everyone is able to join in equally so it’s a real family game.

We are excited to be able to give away a game of Telestrations to one lucky family- we are sure you will enjoy it as much as us so to get you started we are asking you to us the link below to tweet us using the hashtag #telestrationsontwitter your guess as to what my drawing below is!

You can keep up to date with all the latest information from IDEAL Games by following their Facebook page.

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Aquabeads Cars 3 3D Set Review

Posted on August 7, 2017 by whatlukedidnext@gmail.com

My sister, Lottie, has been doing a little bit of a project with our latest Aquabead set.

She is making a 3D Lightning McQueen from the Aquabeads Cars 3 3D range. It is more complicated than the Aquabead sets we have reviewed previously because it is built up in layers, so you do a layer, spray it with water and leave it to set before taking it off and starting the next one.

Lottie has really enjoyed this and has done a layer each day over the last week. You only need to leave it for a short time before you can remove each layer but we have found the longer you can leave them the better they set so doing a layer each day has worked well.

Lottie is really pleased with how Lightning McQueen came out- it’s brilliant how ‘real’ it looks when made out of Aquabeads. You can even drive him around because the wheels really turn but Lottie is so pleased with it she is going to put it on display in her bedroom.

We had already been enjoying our Aquabead sets but Lottie enjoyed the challenge of making a more tricky set. She did need some help with stacking the layers to make the final car but otherwise, other than needing Mum to cut up the templates which are on the instructions for her she was able to do it all herself. Her tips are to use loads and loads of water (far more than you think you need), leave them to set slightly longer than you think they need and be really careful to not use the grey beads instead of white! We also found that you need to try and squash the layers together a bit so it’s useful to have a heavy small box to put on top of them to keep it all flat.

We really like the 3D Aquabead sets, and they do some other ones as well as Lightning McQueen, including Cruz in the same range so you could have a pair! They are aimed at children age 4 plus and I think a four year old could make this with some help but we think they are perfect for children age 6-8 and would make great birthday presents for children of this age group.

Disclaimer: We were sent this awesome Aquabeads Cars 3D set to review but all views are my own and my sister’s.

Fletter- A brand new word game!

Posted on July 26, 2017July 26, 2017 by whatlukedidnext@gmail.com

I was really excited when I was asked if I would like to review a brand new word game. If you have been reading the blog for a while you will know we often have family game nights and this Fletter sounded exactly like the type of game we would enjoy.

It arrived the other day and I was excited to test it with my friend this afternoon when he came round for a play. I asked if he wanted to try Fletter out and he shrugged and said we could give it a go. Within 5 minutes my Mum said she had never heard us both laughing so hard when playing a game and by the time it was time for him to go home he was telling his Mum that Fletter was brilliant and really, really funny and that they had to get it to play with his big sisters.

You get two boxes of cards with letters, each worth a certain number of points and these get divided out between the number of people playing (at least two). Each player puts down a card in turn and then it is a race against players to find words whilst adding more cards to the game. The first person to make a word from the letters gets to claim those letters and the points they are worth but if two people shout the same word at the same time then neither can claim and the cards get taken out of the game. If you shout out a word that doesn’t exist then the other players can give you a special card that makes you ‘Flettered’ and this means you have points to deduct from your total. Once you have put down all the cards and made up as many words as possible you can tot up your total from your letters, deduct any ‘Flettered’ cards and the person with the highest number of points wins the round. The game winner is decided after four rounds.

You can even make the game more difficult by playing in specific rounds- so on round one you make three letter words, on round two you do four letter, on round three it’s five letters and on round four it’s six letters which would really make your brain work! If you get the wrong length of word you would also be Flettered!

I like the fact that it’s an exciting game, you are immediately in the middle of playing without waiting round. It’s quite noisy with words being shouted out and very funny with silly words and trying to shout the loudest the fastest. I don’t think you have to be an amazing speller but you do need to be a quick thinker and be able to make yourself heard. It’s also great because you could take it and play it anywhere. I also think lots of people could play it together so it would be great for a holiday, sleepover or school trip.

I really enjoyed playing Fletter and I know my friend did too, it is my turn to choose the game for our game night on Saturday so I will definitely be getting my parents to play this with me. I think grown ups will enjoy this game just as much as children. I think the age rating of 8 plus is probably right but my little sister will join in and make a team with my Mum – she will enjoy being in charge of the dictionary and giving out the Flettered cards for any made up words! Lottie and I just had a practise run of playing a round together and she really liked it.

**Taking over Mum’s office with a quick practise round of Fletter**!

We will definitely be introducing all our friends to Fletter and would recommend you keep an eye out for it’s arrival in the UK as this is the perfect game for a family celebration.

Bigjigs Toys- Sharing the Fun!

Posted on July 15, 2016February 5, 2017 by Luke K

Bigjig Toys – Sharing the Fun!

We recently had our latest mission from Bigjigs and were excited to see we had been sent some games to try. We were given the mission of share the fun which was perfect as we always have a family game night on a Saturday and we were ready for some new games to try.

We settled down with our drinks and treats as normal and decided to start with the Bigjigs Stacking Tower Game. The bricks are great- they are brightly coloured and a good weight to build up and move out and the game is really good fun, we liked the fact that you roll a dice to see which colour brick you have to remove as it makes it trickier and more exciting than it would be otherwise. We soon had to move all the treats when we realised how competitive it was going to get and just how far the tower would fall when it tumbled! This is a good game because you can easily play it over and over again and no one really feels like the loser (which is good when playing with my four year old sister who doesn’t take well to not winning!) My baby brother loved watching this game from his highchair and clapped every time the bricks tumbled. My top tip would be to find an extra piece of cardboard so you can use it along with the brick box to stack the tower really neatly and make the game last longer. This game is great for anyone age 4 upwards right up to any age.

We then got out the Memory Game which I think is ideal for children age around 3-6 but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it as it is a really good test of your memory and concentration. The pictures on the game are of Mummy animals which have to be matched to the baby animals. Lottie loved this game, the pictures are really nice and it really made her think. I think this would be a really lovely present for a child around my sister’s age but because the disks with the pictures on are thick and good quality they would also be easy to hold and not damage for younger children too. Lottie also got this game out when her friend came over the other day and they had great fun, there was no arguing and they even worked together a bit.

We loved sharing the fun with our family and friends and think these games are really good- they are both the high quality we have come to expect from Bigjigs products and were great entertainment.