This little Piggy...

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

If you came to our house recently or have spoken to me on the phone, you might hear me say "Why are these pigs on the floor?" Or "How many pigs can you stack?" Or even, "Can you make groups of 10 out of our pigs?" No, we haven't taken in a litter of baby piglets, we have been given the opportunity to review a game from www.RnRgames.com  called "Pig Pile" for The Old Schoolhouse review crew . It took our family a little time to get used to to this game. My husband and I tried to play the game first. We thought it went extremely sloooowwwww. However, it is meant for 3- 6 players and at fe misunderstood some of the rules. The rules are actually very clear, but we didn't take the time to read them ALL the first time. After playing this a few more times, we all enjoyed the game. Basically, you can match the card or go higher. If you have multiples, they can be played at once. There are separate piles of cards played in different ways. I was hoping it would be easy enough to play with children who are learning English. It might be a little complicated to explain, but I will let you know in a few months. Last year in Russia, the children really liked to play any kind of games (and watch lots and lots of TV and chew gum). We don't watch much TV or chew gum, but we have many games.

My younger children made up different games with this game. They loved the pigs. There are 40 pigs!! So, that is a lot of pigs. We were never able to call this game "fast paced", but it was something that was easy enough for my 6 year old. Even my 20 yo played a game of it tonight with us. I think this could be played with children younger than 7 (though my 6 yo is almost 7). I believe it could be played with a child as young as 5. There are a couple wild cards, but they look very different and non-reading child could easily pick up on them. In fact my youngest could be a good reader, but isn't yet. So, I am sure she wasn't reading. My younger children always have trouble holding their cards without showing them off. I have thought about getting a couple card holders. Mostly you only have a few cards at a time, but as the game progresses sometime people are stuck with a handful.

Even though we played this game several times, we actually never played 5 full rounds or used up all the pigs, we finished still laughing- which is hard to do when you try to play a game with 7 people aged 6 - 37!  One really funny new variation came about by accident tonight. We kept repeating: " The number must be equal to or greater than the card that is face up". So, my youngest (who loves numbers) slapped down two 1s on top of a 2. She was so dissapointed to find out she couldn't add 2 cards together to make a number equal to or greater than the number that was face up. She thought she had found an excellent way to get rid of more cards in one turn. Normal play is only 1 card at a time and then pick one up- unless you have more than 1 card of the same number or a "clear the deck" card.

At $15.95, we probably would not have purchased this game based in looks alone. Though the desciption on the box and artwork are adorable. For me, I woudl prefer to see this in the $7.99 - 9.99 range and feel more people would take a chance on it in that range. Surprisingly, I didn't see a website on the box. The use of color and illustration was excellent, though. It would have grabbed my attention on a shelf in a store. On the negative side, there are a lot of pieces to lose for my youngest 2  children. . Our dog did chew up 1 and we lost a couple. There are still plenty to play the game. It was very cute. I wonder if it is possible to buy more pigs? We really did find a lot of uses for the cute little things.

This game was provided to our family for free in exchange for my honest opinion and review.

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