Matthew BaileyBala Dino is the next game I’m looking at from Kiwi Zou, and it’s a really interesting race game for young children. Generally speaking, traditional kids’ race games are probably my least favourite mechanic—largely because they usually rely on dice and are completely random. However, as you look at more grown-up race games, they actually start to become really interesting as different mechanics, risk-reward scenarios are introduced.
Bala Dino does a really good job of making this very simple mechanic—often seen in children’s games—a little bit more interesting. Here’s how it works: essentially, you play a child taking your dinosaur for a walk, and you’re all racing to get to the end of the path. The key thing is that you win the game when your dinosaur reaches the end, but if your dinosaur is ever more than three spaces ahead of your meeple and you roll the Billy the Park Keeper side of the dice, then the dinosaur has to return to your meeple.
The game becomes a simple movement game with this extra, quite fun layer of strategy. Obviously, you want to spend your dice rolls moving your dinosaur, but there’s a risk-reward element—if you don’t keep your meeple close, there’s a chance you could lose all that progress.
It’s a really fun, quick game that doesn’t take too long. Players tend to be quite conservative at the beginning, but once the end is in sight, you might decide to just go for it—chancing it and sending your dinosaur running forward.
As well as movement numbers and the aforementioned Billy the Park Keeper, the dice also feature dino footprints. If you roll one of these, you must move forward to the next dino marker, simulating your dinosaur running off in the park—which can obviously cause problems if you haven’t planned everything out properly.
Finally, there are park benches you can land on. If you land on a park bench, you turn over a card, which allows you to do various things, such as moving the meeple player backwards, moving the dinosaur forward, or taking another turn. One thing I couldn’t quite work out from the rulebook is whether the bench card is activated when either of the player’s pieces land on the bench or if it only happens when the person’s meeple lands there. We played assuming it required the person meeple to land on the bench rather than the dinosaur meeple, as this seemed to make the most sense—but as far as I can tell, this isn’t clarified in the rules.
The components are really nice—the artwork is lovely, the meeples are great fun, and the board is good quality. Bala Dino wasn’t my absolute favourite of this round of Kiwi Zou games, but by no means do I think it’s not a good game. It is! It’s really nice, and especially if your child is new to gaming and has only played race games like Snakes and Ladders, this could be just the right next step with a slightly higher level of strategy.
Disclaimer: “Bala Dino” was kindly provided by “Hachette Games” for review. Flavien Loisier is the General Manager of Hachette and is an active member of our community. Rob Trounce has also recently joined our group and is Head of Marketing. Our thoughts and opinions are, however, our own. Should you play? – yes* * This is for young kids looking for the next step up from more traditional, simpler race games.
*For young children looking for the next step up from race games like Snakes & Ladders
