Hammer Time

Note: This is a short really early legacy review before I started posting longer form review in our Facebook Group.

Tonight before bed we decided to play “Hammer Time” for the first time. Both Jack(7) and Toby(4) played but Toby decided he was only going to wear pants and due to obviously safeguarding reasons I have not taken any photos of him… hence lots of closeups of Jack.

When you first open the game it holds a small resemblance to a game that should be in the Dragon’s Breath series also produced by Haba.

The first thing you do is peel off the neoprene sticker and stick it on the back of the box… Ok, let’s talk about this for a second… The sticker is sorta removable but def couldn’t withstand many sticks so you are stuck with the stick on the back of the box. It’s kind of fine but I could see this sticker being a magnet for dirt and grime. This is def a game I would recommend against buying second hand as that sticker may be super mangey and is kind of integral to play.

You put all the gems on top of the box and using the hammer you tap the side of the box to get the gems to fall off. If you have 8 gems or less you can keep the gems to put on your colour coded cards and clear cards. If you knock off 9 or more you awake the dragon and all gems are replaced.

You keep going until one of you has cleared 4 cards.

There are also more advanced playmodes where you have to tap in certain ways.

This sounds like an easy game but actually, we found it a tonne of fun with surprising depth. You can manipulate the gems (3 colours, white is wild and black is useless coal) by carefully tapping to not only try and get the one you want but also potentially move stones others want away from the edges.

The boys loved this and I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. The components are the usual haba high quality but I’m not overly keen on the sticker on the back of the box thing.

thumbs up from me