It is with more than a bit of pleasure that I sit down and take a moment to review Froggy Boogie, as the game has proven to be a big, BIG breakthrough at my house. But before I explain why, let's look at the details.
Price
$25.95 full retail
The Components
Froggy Boogie consists of nine "mommy" frogs, six "baby" frogs, eleven lilly pads (one a bit larger than the rest), and a pair of dice. Now, when I say there are nine mommy frogs, what I mean is that there are nine mommy frog faces and 18 mommy frog eyes, which are removable. This is an important part of the game that we'll dive into in a bit.
The pieces.
All of the pieces are made of hardwood, all are painted (including the the two dice -- no stickers) and all are very high quality. Even the box has a fine matte finish and is built to last. In short, this game with just a bit of care could last well into the 22nd century. The colors are bright, the overall theme is unified, and it is pleasing to the eye. My kids were immediately attracted to the copy sitting out on the table at the Family Game Store in Savage Mill Maryland, and <PERSON> went out of her way to show it off. I bought it at (gasp) full retail price.
Game Play
Froggy Boogie is a simple enough game, but has two magnificent mechanics that make it both accessible to little kids, and interesting enough to hold their attention.
The first mechanic that I'd like to emphasize is how the dice work. The dice have colors painted on their sides instead of numbers or symbols, and for each combination of colors that can appear there is exactly one mommy frog that corresponds (note in the photo above that each mommy frog has a base color with a different color stripe painted through the middle). In spite of two dice spitting out 36 different possible permutations, all combinations are covered by the 9 mommies available. The beauty here is that a four-year-old can look at the two dice colors and find the corresponding mommy frog with no help from mom or dad whatsoever, and kids love it when they can do it on their own.
My kids, ages ten, six, and four playing unsupervised.
Mechanic number two is how the baby frogs move. The goal of the game is to hop your baby frog from one lilly pad to the next all the way around the mommy frogs. You start on the big lilly pad, and with good skill you hop across all the smaller lilly pads back around to the big one again. 511
The baby frog that makes it home first wins.
But that's what you do, not how you do it. How you do it is this -- after rolling the dice you find the momma frog with the corresponding colors. Each momma frog has two removable eyes. One of them is blank on the bottom, the other shows a silhouette of a baby frog. You select an eye, lift it, and look to see which eye you have gotten. If the bottom of the eye is blank, momma hasn't seen you, and you get to hop to the next lilly pad. If the bottom of the eye has a frog on it, you're busted! You have to stay put. The first time each momma frog is selected, it's luck. But after that the players have to make it on their wits, carefully remembering which eye in each momma frog is going to let them get on their way to the finish line, and which is going to stop them in their tracks. Since all players see each draw no one has an advantage -- it's good solid competition.
My twins showing the two different eyes -- one with a frog, one without.
That's all there is to this game, and that's what makes it such a good play. A four-year-old can sit down at this game, understand the rules in ninety seconds, and be in the thick of it 30 seconds later.
My Impressions:
I'm a big fan of pretty pieces, but to me a game has to stand on its own regardless of how it looks. Froggy Boogie is just plain a darn good game. The rules are ultra simple, the game play is easy to manage and captivating, and the game length is just perfect for its target audience. What I find remarkable about the game is that your average four-year-old isn't at much of a disadvantage to older siblings or even mom and dad in this game because it's a matter of simple memory and applying it. Given the amount of complication in my life right now (four kids including four-year-old twins) it's likely that my kids may be at an advantage on memory tasks.
My Kids' Impressions
Something remarkable happened today. 511