Thumbs Up: A Game Review

After I wrote about the game YamSlam that the kids and I love to play, I sent the link to the people at Blue Orange games.

They were so kind and they offered to send a game to our family to play and review.

Well – who says “no, thank you” to games?

Not me!

Thumbs Up arrived at our house and finally, after all the holiday hullabaloo, we had a chance to play the game together.

The kids had been already playing it on their own (albeit with some invented new add-on rules) but I hadn’t had the chance to play it with them.

The directions are quick so the start up time is speedy and I think that’s a bonus.  I struggle with written directions and am particularly slow about reading and understanding eighteen steps to take before you can actually begin to play.

There are a handful of variations on the game play, but basically there are stacks of cards and stacks of colored rings.  To win the game you must stack the colored rings on your thumb in the order that they appear on the cards.  First one to get their stack right keeps the card.  First one with five cards wins.

Here’s what great about this game:

Every age can play it.  You don’t have to be a reader, you just have to know your numbers from one to six and your basic colors.  That gives all the kids (and grown ups) a fair shot at winning.  That creates a game where your preschooler can compete against their middle school sibling.  That’s a nice option.

It’s quick.  You can play a game – any variation of the game that you like – or all the variations – in ten or fifteen minutes.  Sometimes that’s the amount of time you have and you still want to play a game but not invest your entire weekend.  (If you want – you can simply play more rounds to keep the game going.)

It’s silly.  It’s not a heavy-handed competition game.  There isn’t really any in-depth strategy.

You have options.  We quickly added in a  few complications when we payed – just to make it funny.  We tried only scooping the rings with our thumbs – or a version where we had to slide the rings from finger to finger, never allowing them to hit the table.

If you are game-loving family, I think this is a fun little addition.  I don’t think I adore it as much as I love Spot It – have I written about that one yet? – but I think this is lots of fun and rather active and certainly has a place on our game shelf.

Oh – and by the end – we let the competing sort of fall apart and began turning the rings into face decorations.  Because – well, because.