Matthew BaileyOn the first day of Christmas, my children played with me… A reaction game I played with all three.
“Tidy Toyboxes” is a relatively simple Haba game and one of the many younger kids’ games I’m going to be playing over this Christmas period, largely because we’re obviously spending a lot of family time together, which means we want to include Henry in as many games as possible.
To set the game up, each player receives a bed card and places it in front of them. The general idea is that you’ve got to tidy up your room as quickly as possible. You shuffle the box cards and distribute an equal number to each player—normally six. However, the game provides some extra rules that let you adjust this amount for younger players, which we did in this case with Henry. You then place all of the double-sided toy tiles spread out over the table in “mess piles” within easy reach. Finally, arrange the three coloured sticks by length for easy access so they can be grabbed during the game.
To start the game, someone shouts “Tidy up!” and you then need to quickly find the card that matches your toy box. Your toy box will show two toys, so you have to find the card with both of those toys on it—one on each side. This is actually quite an interesting concept, which I haven’t really come across before. It makes the game much more challenging than you might think and adds a slight element of luck, which balanced things out nicely for Henry playing against the rest of us. Once you have filled all of your toy boxes with toys, you grab the longest stick available, which signifies the end of your round.
Then you check: firstly, if everything matches. If someone makes a mistake, they have to take a red mess tile. Additionally, everyone who took a stick takes a mess tile in the same colour as their stick, meaning the person with the green stick doesn’t take any.
All mess tiles must go under each person’s bed, and none of the mess tiles can be visible. The game ends when there are no more red mess tiles to be collected or when someone cannot fit more mess tiles under their bed. At this point, you count up the socks on your mess tiles, and the person with the fewest socks wins.
What’s also nice about this game is that there are decent balancing options. For instance, you can give younger players fewer toy boxes to make it easier for them to complete them quickly.
While Haba games are always of excellent quality, you do often see similar mechanics coming up. This isn’t always a problem, but when you play as many games as I do, it’s nice to sometimes be surprised. “Tidy Toyboxes” did surprise me a little. It’s a lovely, simple game that can easily be balanced for younger and older players. The need to find just one specific tile with the correct sides adds a fun extra element of dexterity when you’re trying to do it quickly. I also really liked the mechanic of hiding everything under your bed—it works very thematically and adds an element of spatial awareness. Henry really enjoyed this, although there’s actually quite a lot going on for a relatively simple Haba game. This is one of the few yellow-box Haba games that, while perfectly suitable for younger children, might also work quite well with slightly older children due to the nature of the gameplay.
If you’re looking for something simplistic but a little bit different, this is definitely one to consider. Plus, it’s currently available on and off at TK Maxx for just a few pounds.
