Matthew BaileyHaving had a scary few days where poor Toby managed to fall down 14 stairs onto hard ground leaving him unable to see or detect light and dark for a little over 2 hours. A CT scan, no bleed on the brain and some anti-inflammatories later he is on the mend and is now back at home taking it easy for a few days having received a very severe concussion.
I asked him which of the games we played recently I should cover tonight (reminding him I still haven’t posted the second half of our Screwball Scramble card game 2 parter) he went for this (and who am I to argue)…
“Catch the Wave” is a memory-based card game from Heldberg Games that our family, especially Jack(.8.), has absolutely fallen in love with over the last week or so.
Played here by Jack(8.), Toby(5) and myself.
“Catch the Wave” is very simple in premise but fiendishly difficult in practice and a whole lot of fun. Essentially, each player picks up a set of cards numbered from 1 to 20, and you proceed to mix these sets of cards up on the table in front of you, resulting in 60 facedown cards for a game with three players, as we played here.
Then, you take a card, look at it, and place it face down in front of you. On each subsequent turn, you pick up a card, look at it, and then you have to place it face down in front of you in number order based on the other cards that are already in your row, even though you cannot see them.
This starts off fairly simple, but when you have 15 or more cards to remember, it starts to get a little tricky. Each player can use a Sharks fin to look at one of the cards in their row to hopefully regain their bearings. The game ends when every player has picked up 20 cards, and you then reveal the order in which you laid them. You score points for your longest run of correct cards.
After the first few games, it became very apparent that Jack was way better at this than myself and Toby, with us managing to get around the five to eight mark, and Jack achieving 17 on his first game.
As you become more competent, you can throw in distraction cards. These are cards with a sequence on them where you have a run of numbers and a code word that you pre-agree at the beginning of the game. For example, if the code name was “bananas” and on your card it said “three, four, x, six, seven,” you would have to say “one,” then the next player would say “two,” and so on, but instead of the code word, you use “5, 10, 15, and 20.” Once you’ve done this, the game continues, and by that point, you’ve pretty much forgotten what all your cards are.
This was my first experience with Heldberg Games, and I am absolutely in love with the art style, production, and everything about the presentation. The games are presented in corrugated cardboard boxes with a lino print style printing on them. When you buy them from the publisher, you get a random colour print. All of their games follow this gorgeous style, with all the other components made of really nice brown card. You also get a cool wooden bag tag with this one, which has absolutely no use but is just cool.
One word of warning. While this is a small box game it takes up a hefty amount of table space.
All of their games are heavily inspired by Japan, even though they are a German company, and I suspect that by the end of the year, I will probably have all of their games.
One word of warning, though: even though this game is clearly suitable for children in terms of design, the rulebook can often be fairly tongue-in-cheek and has a fair amount of rude language in it.
This game really took me by surprise, and while I am not normally a big fan of memory games, this is something special that I wholeheartedly recommend if you can track down a copy as its not widely available in the UK currently.
Disclaimer: A copy of “Catch the Wave” was provided for the purpose of review by “Heldberg Games” (https://www.heldbergsgames.com) via the “BoardGame Review Network UK”, but my thoughts and opinions are my own. Trying to get a five and eight-year-old to lie, you will find is very difficult.
