Matthew BaileyGame 14 of the “Bailey Family Summer 2023 Board Game Bonanza” is “Castle Climbing Frog,” played by myself and Jack (8.).
“Castle Climbing Frog” is a unique match-two dexterity game that stands apart from anything else I can think of on the market. In this review, I’m going to do things a little differently and start with my recommendation.
First and foremost, I don’t think you should rush out to purchase “Castle Climbing Frog.” It normally costs around £30 (although it has come down from the £40 odd it used to be), and the box is absolutely massive. However, I would 100% recommend playing this if your local board game cafe has a copy. In fact, this, along with “Magic Labyrinth” (which will likely be my next post-game review), is the game that we play the most at our local cafe.
Let me explain:
Once you have set up the Castle structure, which has an amazing table presence as you can see in the pictures, using bulldog clips and strings, you have the “Castle Climbing Frog” at the bottom of the Castle. You then play a rather simple match-two game where you turn over a card and then have to find the matching window with that person in it. If you get the person correctly, you then have to try and lift a marble of the relevant colour up the castle by pulling on the two strings and moving the Frog up. It’s a really cool mechanic that is fun and very unique.
You can make the game more or less difficult by having extra holes up the side of the castle to get stuck on, and you can block these off if you wish to make the game easier for younger kids. While I played this game here with Jack, I’ve also played it with Toby, and both boys absolutely adore it.
The component quality is high; everything is well-made, and it works extremely well. Part of me really wishes that the match-two game was a bit more engaging and that there was more of a game aspect apart from the dexterity element, which is obviously the star of the show. I think if you had different Castle inserts that you could play at different levels and make this game a pure dexterity game rather than a match-two game with a dexterity element, this might actually be a better game overall.
The thing is, while we always play this at the board game cafe, and the boys adore it, I have a strong suspicion that if this was a game that we owned, it would never see play, and it would take up massive space under the coffee table.
This is great to play once or twice but I am not convinced it would stand up to long-term play.
The quality of all the components is outstanding but it’s the usual no Haba no insert or anything to organise anything nonsense so everything just jiggles about in the box.
So there we go, a short recommendation that this is a game you should 100% play, but I can’t bring myself to recommend that you go out and own it.
