Matthew BaileyWith my hand surgery starting to look like it’s a thing of the past and me being well on the mend, and with the majority of kids finally broken up for the summer holidays, we are finally going to get started with this year’s Summer Games Fest.
Today I’m going to start by looking at a relatively short game, but something which Henry has had a lot of fun with and the other kids have really liked as well. If you are looking for something really simple, yet active and a bit silly to get your kids doing stuff at the start of the summer holidays, this might be worth a look.
Fart Yoga is essentially a dexterity game, yet you’ve got to be slow and careful. The game comes with a sloth that you strap around your stomach and turn on what is essentially a movement sensor in its body. You then draw five cards and have to essentially try and complete the yoga poses on those cards without moving too abruptly in order to set off the motion sensor and make Sammy the Sloth fart. Each card has a difficulty level, and there are a number of stars on the card which indicate how many times it is okay to allow Sammy to fart without losing the point.
If you manage it, you get the card, you get the point, and once everyone’s had a turn, the most points wins.
It’s really quick, it’s really silly, it’s really simple, but the boys actually really enjoyed playing with this and, to be honest, I did as well. It’s got a good level of sensitivity, meaning that it’s not too easy, yet it’s not too difficult, and the cards tend to be fairly forgiving in terms of how many times you’re allowed to make it fart. We ended up house-ruling it so that the stars on the cards worked like par in golf, and we ended up giving you points for getting under par and having everyone do the same set of cards. Obviously this is not how it’s meant to be played, but we found for more, let’s say, competitive play, which admittedly isn’t necessarily in the spirit of the game, it probably worked slightly better. So that’s something you can do if you want.
The sloth itself is really sweet and, again, the whole thing works really nicely.
I’ve got a few issues, but they don’t completely detract from the experience. Issue number one is the box it comes in. As usual with these types of games and toys where they want you to see the physical product, once you’ve taken Sammy the Sloth out of the box there’s not really any way to store him. It comes with a set of cards that obviously don’t have any kind of holder, so you are basically left with a cuddly toy, a deck of cards, and no real easy way to store them. I ended up putting the whole thing in an IKEA bag, but it’s not super ideal.
The other thing that’s really weird is the way that the fart mechanism works. Essentially, it’s a cube inside an openable sphere that I can only really describe as being a bit like a Kinder Egg, inside the body of Sammy. It works absolutely fine, but the problem is there’s no easy way to turn the model off. Every time you want to turn him on or off, you’ve got to take the sphere out of his body, then open the sphere, then turn the thing off, then put the thing back in, close the sphere, and then force it back into the body, which is actually quite tight. It’s not super easy to do.
This is not a massive problem, but there is no way your kids are going to turn this thing off. They will just leave it on, and it will end up running out of battery probably the first time you’ve used it simply because it’s quite fiddly to turn off. Again, it’s not an ideal deal-breaker, but it’s something that is worth mentioning if you know this is the sort of thing you’re going to find a bit irritating as a parent.
Overall, Fart Yoga is silly dexterity fun, and I thought it was a really good one to get started with, as it’s low-key something which is definitely going to get more play over the summer because you can play it outside where people have got more space. It’s not absolutely essential, but it’s a nice, fun little game and perfect for those beginning-of-the-summer playdates. I just wish the storage solution was better.
Disclaimer: A copy of Fart Yoga was kindly gifted to us by Golden Bear Toys. I have not been paid for this review, and all of our thoughts and opinions are our own.
