Matthew BaileyGame 20 of the “Bailey Family Summer 2023 Board Game Bonanza” is “The Little Orchard” played by Jack (8.) and myself.
“The Little Orchard” is a fairly simple memory match game that, due to the quality of components, becomes a lot more than the sum of its parts, and Henry really enjoyed playing this. The idea is you lay out all of the flowers and then roll the dice to see which flower you are going to turn over. There are three of each, and on the back, there is either an apple, a crow, or a sleeping animal. If you turn over the apple, you get to take one of the apples off the trees and put them in your basket. If you turn over the crow, the crow moves one step forward toward the tree, and if you turn over the sleeping animal, nothing happens, and you reset. The idea is that as you go through the game, you remember where the animals and crows are and thereby turn over all of the apples before the crow can get to the tree.
It’s a simple game which essentially boils down to some simple memory, but the quality of the components means that for a young child, there is the illusion of a lot going on here, and as such, it’s very sweet.
The components are of really high quality. The crow is well-made, the tiles and tree are good, the apples are lovely, and the little wicker basket is a nice touch. As usual with HABA, there’s nothing that resembles an insert, but by this point, I think we just have to accept that.
What’s nice about this is that because it is cooperative, it means even the young child can talk them through their turns, and this really helped with colour recognition and understanding consequences.
Henry really enjoyed this and wanted to play it again afterwards, which we did.
