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The Quest Kids
The Quest Kids
2021 | Fantasy, Kids Game
Have you heard of The Quest Kids? It’s a YouTube channel featuring six young adventurers as they use powerful “Tolk Gems” to help complete quests and protect the city of Treasure Falls. These kids are always striving for good and understanding, and are not afraid to do what is right in all scenarios. These Quest Kids are ideal role models for young children, and when I heard of board games based on the IP I knew my kids and I would love the games. Was my Faith Tolk Gem pointing me in the right direction, or has it gone dark for me? SPOILER: This game is great!

The Quest Kids is a dungeon crawler style board game for players as young as five years of age. Yes, FIVE! In it, players are acting as one of these Quest Kids, attempting to explore the cave of Tolk the Wise. The Quest Kids will find abilities to enhance their own, treasures to collect, and silly bad guys to scare away within, and the player with the most stars (VP) at the end will win the game!

DISCLAIMER: We were provided a copy of this game for the purposes of this review. This is a retail copy of the game, so what you see in these photos is exactly what would be received in your box. I do not intend to cover every single rule included in the rulebook, but will describe the overall game flow and major rule set so that our readers may get a sense of how the game plays. For more in depth rules, you may purchase a copy from the publisher online or from your FLGS. -T


To setup, place the large game board on the table and populate it with the green, gray, and red Dungeon Tiles according to the rules. Also prepare the card decks and place them appropriately in their spaces on the board. The Treasure Tokens are placed in the Treasure Bag. Each player will receive one Quest Kid Player Mat and matching figurine. In addition each player will receive three starting Health Cards, one Quest Card, and one appropriate starting Ability Card. The game may now begin from the entrance to the cave!
On a turn players will be able to have free movement around the board exploring tiles and resolving them in turns. Green tiles are always good for the players, Gray tiles may have some bad guys but are predominantly good, and Red tiles are littered with those silly bad guys that will need to be scared away. A player will travel to a board location and encounter a Dungeon Tile by flipping it over and collecting the resources shown or attempting to scare away the bad guys. Bad guys can be scared by discarding the printed Ability Cards on their tile. Once discarded, the player collects the tile to their Player Mat for stars at game end.

Sometimes players will encounter a bad guy they do not possess enough Ability Cards to scare away. In these scenarios the player may ask the other players for help. Nonactive players may then offer Ability Cards from their stash in order to help achieve the goal. For every Ability Card donated to the cause the donating Quest Kid will receive one Kind Kid Card. Kind Kid Cards are always great and can be resolved at ANY time during the game. Should a player encounter a bad guy they cannot scare away and other Quest Kids cannot help with Ability Cards, the active player will suffer a loss of one of their Health Cards (worth two stars).

Some tiles or Quest cards will instruct the player to draw one or more treasures from the Treasure Bag. Most treasures are good and provide stars, but some are blobs that eat stars. Each Treasure Token also has two values. The top value is for the normal amount of stars. However, the bottom value is worth more stars if the controlling player matches the Quest Kid printed on the token. Some treasure may be worth just one star unless the Quest Kid is a match, in which case it is then worth three stars, for example.


Turns continue in this fashion until all Dungeon Tiles have been resolved or a stalemate reached. At this point all players count up their stars they have collected from various sources and the player with the most stars is the winner!
Components. This is a kids’ game, can we all agree? THIS kids’ game, however, boasts some of the most interesting and wonderful components I have seen. The board is huge and depicts a magical cave. Super cool. The tiles are easy to read and understand, as with all the iconography. The Quest Kids themselves all have the same abilities (unless the expansion is added – and the review for that is coming soon), so that smaller children are not burdened with having to remember their special abilities. There are these plastic Tolk Gems that can be collected during the game and children absolutely flip for these things. And did you see those colorful and very big minis? I mean, come on! It’s a kids’ game! They LOVE minis! The game also comes with cardboard standees in case your children cannot handle the minis carefully enough.

Here is the deal. I absolutely adore these Quest Kids games. They are absolutely the perfect difficulty for young gamers who are ready to step up from the Candy Lands and Chutes & Ladders. Now, the box suggests 5+ but my 4-year-old did just fine with it, so take that with a grain of salt. Having had him already familiarize himself with The Quest Kids characters in The Quest Kids: Matching Adventure, this was an easier process getting this game to the table for us.

The game gives an exciting dungeon crawl experience for younger children, and it’s honestly something I never really knew I needed in my life until I now have it. It is so simple to teach and play and definitely encourages helping other players, if even just because you receive those Kind Kid cards in return. Anything to create that helpful player atmosphere to prepare them for heavier cooperative games is much appreciated.

Please do not misunderstand me. The Quest Kids is targeting younger players, but I do believe that any aged gamer could appreciate and have a good time with this. It certainly will not fill the void of other dungeon crawlers, but if you need a fix and would like to spend 20-45 minutes playing something to scratch that itch, then pull out your copy of The Quest Kids. It is super-light, colorful, and is a perfect stepping stone to bigger cooperative games. Purple Phoenix Games (with special guest Finley) gives this one a Kind 11/12. Please visit the publisher’s website to pick up your copy, and have a great time introducing your children (or partners, in-laws, grannies, pets, whomever) to cooperative dungeon crawls that will have you leaving the table in a much better mood than when you sat down.
  
Tiger Stripes
Tiger Stripes
2021 | Animals, Card Game
So it was one of those days when I was checking my email and noticed something odd. I had a random tracking number sitting in my inbox for a game arriving soon. I didn’t recall requesting this game, so why was I having one shipped? A mystery still to this day. However, I recognized the designer’s last name, but could she be related to the designer in mind that I particularly enjoy? And would this game be any good? I was cautiously hopeful.

Tiger Stripes is a set collection, hand management, drafting game for two to four players. In it, players are young tiger cubs just earning their stripes (a fact I did not know prior to playing: that tiger cubs aren’t born with stripes). Each cub will earn their stripes by drafting the best available cards and utilizing them to the fullest in order to collect sets of prey.

Oh fact check: tigers are born with stripes already, so this game is not based fully on facts.

DISCLAIMER: We were provided a copy of this game for the purposes of this review. This is a retail copy of the game (I think), so what you see in these photos is probably what would be received in your box. I do not intend to cover every single rule included in the rulebook, but will describe the overall game flow and major rule set so that our readers may get a sense of how the game plays. For more in depth rules, you may purchase a copy online or from your FLGS. -T


To setup, each player will choose their tiger avatar cards and also receive seven Stripe tokens. The card deck is shuffled, and each player is dealt two cards for the starting hand. The remainder of the deck is placed on the table as a draw deck, but five cards are dealt to the table as an offer row. The youngest player goes first, and the stripes are ready to be earned, like Boy Scout badges… but for ferocious tiger cubs.
Turns are taken in three steps. The player must make a choice of one action for the first step of their turn: Draw a card, Take a tiger card, or Capture Prey. A player may choose to blindly draw a card from the top of the deck and add it to their hand as their action. Alternately, the player may instead choose to take a tiger card from the offer row and add it to their hand. Both of these are self-explanatory.

The third action that can be taken is to Capture Prey. A tiger may capture prey from the offer row by discarding cards from their hand with matching symbols to their target cards they wish to capture. Each card in Tiger Stripes has one or more symbols printed in the upper left hand corner. By discarding cards from hand to the discard pile, a player may use all the symbols provided by these cards to match with cards’ symbols from the offer row. For example, a player may discard two tiger cards and a snake card, noting the symbols now provided. By using the purchasing power of these symbols, the player may then draft cards from the offer row by paying their cost in symbols. It is entirely possible for a player to be able to draft cards from hand in order to purchase all available cards in the offer row to be added to their hand. An explanation of the significance of this is coming.

The second step of a turn is mandatory only if the prerequisites are met: every set of three like cards in hand are discarded in return for Stripe Tokens. So, for every set of three matching monkey, snake, deer, and boar, the player will receive one, two, three, or four Stripe Tokens to be added to their avatar card, respectively, with any tiger cards discarded to be treated as wild cards to complete a set. Therefore, a player may wish to purchase all cards from the offer row in an attempt to score multiple sets during this second step to earn as many stripes as possible.

Finally, the third step of the turn is to Replenish the Jungle (the offer row). For any cards drafted in the turn, the player will replace with cards from the draw deck to setup the next player’s turn.


Play continues in this fashion of grabbing cards, discarding cards, and scoring sets for stripes until one player has earned their seventh stripe and won the game!
Components. This game is a deck of cards and a bunch of Stripe Tokens. The cards are all nice quality, with linen finish, but are a bit on the thinner side as far as flimsiness is concerned. I think if players are all somewhat careful this will not pose problems. If so, consider sleeving your copy. The Stripe Tokens are oblong octagons with stripey art. Speaking of the art, throughout the game the art is very cute and cuddly… except for the boar. He is crotchety. I do enjoy finding the stalking tiger somewhat hidden on each card’s art. A great nod to the noble tiger’s hunting ability.

Now, as I was typing the rules breakdown I felt like I was typing quite a lot for as light as the game actually is. In fact, though it says on the box that it is intended for ages 7+ I just couldn’t leave out my little 5-year-old gamer son. He grasped the rules really well, and though he hasn’t developed the best strategy-focused brain skills yet, he is still able to play and enjoy Tiger Stripes. In actuality, he and I had a blast playing through this several times. Yes, it is a resource optimization card drafting game, but to him, it was more like procuring a veritable zoo of cute animals that then offered his tiger the stripes needed to win. And win he did. Several times. This certainly isn’t a game of high strategy and multiple-minute turns, but rather a quick and easy card game with a great little theme.

Is the designer, Isabel duBarry, a relative of the great Philip duBarry? Perhaps. And that is a great thing, because one of our favorite games across the board is Revolution! Perchance game design just runs in the family. I am not sure, so maybe someone can chime in on this here.

When my son adds a game to his rotation, that is a sign of a great little game for us. He has added Tiger Stripes to this rotation and we will be playing the mess out of it here over the next several weeks/months. While this is by no means a gamer’s game, it is absolutely perfect for a game day with kids. My child loves it, and I quite enjoy playing as a tiny tiger out on the prowl for their stripes. If you have littles at home, parents who haven’t quite converted fully into game partners, or newbies you are inviting into the hobby, Tiger Stripes is a good little game to get the party started. It’s quick, easy, features great art and theme, and introduces simple mechanics to hook people on gaming. Go grab a copy and just keep it in your back pocket for those times you need something like this for that one special group in front of you.
  
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