Matthew BaileyGame 23 of the “Bailey Family Summer 2023 Board Game Bonanza” is “Mind the Gap” played by Jack (8.), Toby (5), and myself.
“Mind the Gap” is a fun TfL licensed card game that is essentially like Uno, but using UK tube stations instead of numbers and colours. Essentially, you have a hand of cards that you are trying to get rid of, and you do this by laying a matching colour tube line on the pile.
You are supposed to say the name of the station as you lay it, which we obviously ignored for Toby as he only has limited reading skills, but Jack quite enjoyed saying the station names. There are also a number of other cards that do things such as make you redraw your hand, change direction, and skip a turn, much like in Uno.
What is quite fun is that having slight knowledge of the tube lines was actually a benefit because I had an idea of what would be the rarer colours based on the shorter tube lines. There were definitely a few occasions whilst playing where I felt I had to make a genuine decision over which was the best card to lay. Do I lay a card with all but one station but a station that is fairly common, or do I lay a card that has three stations but three stations that are less common, such as the DLR?
All in all, it’s a fun Uno clone that, to be honest, I think I would actually rather play than Uno. Plus, it has a nice bit of educational value in terms of learning about various tube stations.
The downside to this package, however, is that it comes in quite possibly the worst packaging I have ever seen for a game. Firstly, it comes in a London Underground logo-shaped metal tin which at first glance is really nice and something I would quite happily just own to keep mementos in. Ignoring the fact that this beast isn’t going nicely on a Kallax shelf anywhere, there are a number of other issues once you open it up.
When the game is in transit, the cards are obviously vacuum-sealed and packed super tightly together. Once you have opened and played with the cards, however, and they expand slightly, they do not fit back in the box. If you place them on top of each other like you would assume, the lid of the box is going to pop off if you try to compress the cards. There is no insert, so in order to get the cards to actually go in the box, you have to kind of lay them diagonally on their side, which obviously is going to wreck the cards by the time of my next play of this.
This is fairly available in bricks and mortar shops so it might be cheaper to purchase it from one of those.
So to sum up, “Mind the Gap” is a decent Uno clone that I would actually rather play than Uno, with a decent amount of fun and educational value, but it comes in quite possibly the worst box I have ever seen (but if unlike me then that won’t bother you and you fancy an Uno type game (that isn’t Uno) then go for it).
Disclaimer: A copy of “Mind the Gap” was kindly provided by Gibsons Games (https://gibsonsgames.co.uk/collections/family) for the purpose of review and also as a donation to the school at which I work. All of our thoughts and opinions are our own (try to convince an eight and five-year-old to not give you an honest answer, and you will see why this is definitely not in doubt).
