Farm Rescue from Brain Games — Review
Can you protect the animals from the advancing wolf in this family game?
*Note* A Copy of this game was provided by the Publisher for the purposes of review.
Publisher — Brain Games
Designer — Harris Tsagas
Art Direction — Reinis Petersons
Game Type — Cooperative and Memory
Initial Year of Release — 2019
Age Range — 4+
Expected Playtime — 15 Minutes
Number of Players — 1–5
Theme and What is it?
Using memory you try to protect the animals in your farm from the advancing wolf. Can you get the animals to hide or help the farmer catch the wolf before it’s too late?
Farm Rescue is a family focused memory game with a dash of luck.
Initial Impressions
Coming out of the box the pieces were nice. I thought the bits had a decent thickness to hold up to young children. The rules looked pretty straight forward. I thought everything here looked good for the age range of the game.
Game Mechanics
To set up the game you place the score track down surrounding the play area. You place the twenty five animal tokens in the middle of the play area face up in a loose five by five grid. Then place the farmer and wolf figures on their spaces.
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In turn players will roll the animal and color dice. You then find the color animal combination that was rolled. If that combination is face up then you flip it face down. If it’s face down then you have to figure out which face down tile it is and flip it face up to check.
If you correctly flip the right animal token then you move the farmer figure one space forward on the track. If you are incorrect then you move the wolf figure one space forward. Either way you flip the animal token face down once finished.
The game ends in success if the farmer figure ever reaches the wolf figure or if all of the animal tokens are flipped face down. The game is lost if the wolf figure ever reaches and enters the farm.
Game Build and Quality
I think everything is fine. The tokens are a nice thickness, though I could stand for them to be a hair thicker. The dice is decent though I wish it were a bit chunkier.
Artistic Direction
The art in the game is cute and family friendly as befitting the target audience.
Fun Factor
This is a quick memory game designed for kids to practice their memory skills. The use of dice to help randomize the game helps to add a sense of surprise and give rise to the tactics of the game.
Age Range and Weight
The box says 4+ and I think that is pretty accurate. As the game is cooperative and makes mention of how and when the players should be helping one another is quite clear. I think this game will work well for young players and thus the box is probably dead on.
Conclusions
This game is fine. It is built on and aimed at young children to help them work on their memory. I think it will do that. I’m not sure how much fun the kids will have when playing it though.
I think the need to flip over all of the tiles can be difficult since it’s random which animal color combinations you’ll roll. However, they do have the added win condition of catching the wolf with the farmer. I appreciate they didn’t make winning entirely luck based.
All in all I think the game will find a place helping kids work on their memory and cooperation skills. For that I think it will do what it is intended. Though, I’m not sure if they will be having a lot of fun while doing it.
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Overall Rating — 6/10
