Kids Chronicles: Quest for the Moon Stones

As we reach the home stretch and are comfortably going to be last year’s record of 39, the boys were in the mood for an adventure today so game 36 of the “Bailey family sorta Summer Board Game Bonanza” is “Kids Chronicles: Quest for the Moon Stones ” played by myself Jack(7) and Toby(4)

Kids Chronicles: Quest for the Moon Stones is a cooperative family board game that mixes a board game and app much like “Yummy Yummy Monster Tummy” I reviewed a few weeks ago (also from Lucky Duck Kids).

You play as a group of kids, as magician’s apprentices, accompanied by Nils The Moon Cat (think the dragon in Never Ending Story), they embark on a quest to find four magical Moon Stones. To achieve their goal, young magicians must solve numerous mysteries and help the inhabitants of both Kingdoms overcome their problems.

The game works by scanning locations on the board, which brings up a 3D world on the app you can look at. You then lay the cards and items you find down and can then scan them to use them and pick them up.

The best way to describe this is a sorta board gamey version of a “PC point and click adventure game” such as “The Secret of Monkey Island” or “Maniac Mansion”. You find characters with issues, your search somewhere else, find an item to help you with the previous character etc.

In reality short of scanning cards there is very little interaction with the board and Unlike Yummy Yummy Monster Tummy this really didn’t need to be a board game.

You spend most of the time holding the app and looking about, scanning cards is a real chore this time round using the back camera (especially on an iPad).

The story was fine (we did 2 quests) and while the boys seem to enjoy it (and find solving the clue satisfying) they were not keen to play again and I am not sure they will be (instead we went back to Wonderbook and did chapter 5).

Another big issue is the lack of sound. There is no sound in the app… at all. Now I would have liked voice acting and that really would have raised it up but the lack of even some mystical music is really a bit rubbish.

As you can tell I didn’t overly gel with this and I think I can’t see the boys asking to play this again (and I am definitely not suggesting it).

A rare miss for us but please tell me if you have had different experiences.