We were lucky enough a little while ago to be selected as testers/ reviewers for Green Board games, who sent us Trilemma, Brainbox Inventions and Safari to try out.
Trilemma was the first to be wheeled out. We’ve been looking for maths resources to strengthen basic maths skills for both children, and it turned out that this was about spot on. Questions at different levels mean that they can choose to challenge themselves or play safe, and there’s an element of luck involved preventing better mathematicians from just waltzing off with the game. I even joined in several times and wasn’t bored silly, which has to be a pretty good recommendation for all those parents who just know they are going to be roped in to game playing sessions. It is unashamedly mathematical, so if your child is completely averse to sums this won’t go down well, but if you’re looking for a fun way to practise basic number facts going right up to age 11 ish, this is an excellent tool.
Brainbox Inventions, doesn’t, as you might have expected, rely on general knowledge. Instead this is a quickfire game to build up observational and memory skills, as players have a short time to look at a card with a number of facts on, then must turn the card over and answer a randomly chosen question. It’s surprisingly difficult – I was beaten hands down the first twice I played, and though you’d expect to get a little bored of the cards, as the overall game is limited to 10 minutes, you don’t get time to work through so many as to recognise them. Both observational and memory skills are sorely in need of practice here, so this was another game that went down well, and I recommend it. There are a variety of different titles in this series, so you don’t have to stick with the Inventions one we tried, you could choose something more appropriate to your family’s interests.
Brainbites Safari was the only one of the three games that didn’t go down well. Despite the nifty presentation in a little tin, it was felt that the game just wasn’t challenging enough to hold anyone’s interest. They even took it away overnight to play with friends and it didn’t pique anyone’s interest. Whether we just have an extraordinarily knowledgeable group of children in this particular area who therefore found the game a bit boring I’m not sure, but it hasn’t been requested again since, unlike the others. I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has played it what they thought.
So overall, Green board games makes pretty good games. We recommend Trilemma and the Brainbox series, though we’re not quite so convinced by Safari.
Disclosure – we were sent these games free of cost for review.
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