Matthew BaileyGame 45 of the “Now & Then Summer Marathon 2024” is “Stomp N’ Smash Game” played with Henry(3).
“Sink N’ Sand” is one of my favourite mainstream games. I think it’s a brilliantly simple dexterity game that is unique and works incredibly well for what it is. So, imagine my excitement upon the release of the next in what I’m going to call Spin Master’s “N’” series: the Jurassic Park-themed “Stomp N’ Smash”.
Unfortunately, now that we’ve finally played it, I’m sad to report that it’s a disappointment, piled on top of some bizarre decisions and a list of board game design errors. Strap in—this is going to be rough.
Let’s get the general concept of the game out of the way so we can talk about the juicy stuff. Essentially, you have a board where play goes around in a simple fashion and a deck of cards. Each player starts with three clones made out of kinetic sand, which actually have very little gameplay aspect in the game. On your turn, you draw a card and do what it says, which quite often involves moving your piece around the board and reacting to certain spaces that you land on. These can be things such as making a new clone, moving forward more, everyone making a clone, or having one of your clones—or one of your opponent’s—stomped.
If you pass your start space, you get an amount of tokens equal to half the number of clones you have. This tedious nonsense continues until one of you reaches five tokens, which, you’ll be pleased to know, happens pretty quickly. I think the whole game is over in less than five minutes.
And it’s just not fun at all…
The issues start with the rules. The second rule in the setup states: “Select the dinosaur mover that matches your colour and place it at the start space of your home territory.” The third rule states: “Using the kinetic sand moulds, create three dinosaur clones and place one on your home territory start space. Keep the others close to your home territory on the game board.” Now, these kinetic sand clones are bigger than the space, and I’m also supposed to be putting my starter on that space, which doesn’t make any sense.
The moulds are pretty small, so the objects made out of the kinetic sand don’t have much weight behind them. As such, they’re pretty flimsy. Unlike in “Sink N’ Sand,” where all of the sand falls into a box, in “Stomp N’ Smash” the sand just sits on a cardboard board. As such, the sand goes everywhere and makes a massive mess.
Now, the highlight of the show for the children is obviously the concept of getting to smash your clones—or your opponent’s clones—to turn them into a little Jurassic Park logo. Unfortunately, because of how thin the clones are, and the fact that the smasher isn’t that deep, this doesn’t work very well. The sand just sticks to the smasher and, again, it all makes a mess, leaving you without the nice moulded imprint you should get.
To be honest, this game doesn’t need to use kinetic sand. You could replace it with Play-Doh or plasticine, and it would function better.
“Sink N’ Sand” works because it takes the physics of kinetic sand and uses them in a really interesting way to create a fun little dexterity game. “Stomp N’ Smash,” however, takes an ultra-basic board game framework (essentially the type of board game a six-year-old would make if you told them to “make a board game”) and shoehorns kinetic sand into it without really achieving much.
All of the other components are nastily cheap. The cardboard tokens are thin, and the T-Rex stand wobbles all over the place. The cards themselves are ultra-cheap and nasty, feeling exactly the same as the counterfeit ones I encountered a couple of weeks ago when I reviewed “Skip-Bo.”
I think the biggest issue is that this is just such a missed opportunity.
So, here are my off-the-top-of-my-head ideas for a Jurassic World kinetic sand game that I’m pretty confident would be better than this:
Dino Dig Adventure
You could have made a game centred around digging in kinetic sand for dinosaur pieces or bones. Think of something along the lines of “Operation,” maybe using chopsticks to pick up pieces from the kinetic sand. As you take the pieces out, you try to assemble a skeleton. If you pick up a piece you already have, you have to drop it back into the sand pit. You could even have different tools that use a different number of action points or tools that you can use once per turn.
Chase and Capture
A game similar to what we’ve got here, but as you move around the board, all the cards you pick up have two options on them: one to move and the other to perform some sort of action, such as moving yourself forward, making a new clone, or hindering your opponent. As you move around the board, a T-Rex also moves around the board chasing you. If it catches up with you, it stomps on you.
Territory Control
A simple area control game where players control either humans or dinosaurs on an island. One player plays as the humans, the other as the dinosaurs, and you’re trying to control territory. The game board features territories represented by mounds of kinetic sand, with hidden resource tokens inside. As you move into these areas, you have to dig through the kinetic sand to claim the resources, which give you points, powers, or some other kind of mechanic.
Dinosaur Nest Hunt
A game where players compete to capture rare dinosaurs that have escaped on an island or to capture their eggs. The board has a central nesting ground filled with kinetic sand, and dinosaur eggs are hidden inside. Each egg contains different types of dinosaur powers. (In my mind, I’m imagining tiny, Kinder Egg-like things that open and shut with different things inside.) You move around the board to collect digging tools, which allow you to go into the nesting ground and find and reveal the dinosaur inside. Some dinosaurs give you bonuses or powers, which can be used to benefit yourself or hinder your opponent.
Jurassic World Park Builder
A game where players compete to build the largest and most impressive Jurassic World Park. Each player has a sandbox area where they use kinetic sand to build buildings, dinosaurs, trees, and other items. To get the resources for this, players move around the board collecting them, similar to how resources are collected in “Catan.” As you gain resources, you receive physical amounts of kinetic sand that you can then use to build things. Different items are worth different points, and as the game progresses, you can demolish structures by reclaiming the kinetic sand and using it to build new things.
Anyway, after that massive digression, I can comfortably say that “Jurassic World Stomp N’ Smash Game,” as it’s so wonderfully called, is one of the worst games I’ve played this summer. There is nothing redeeming about it that I could recommend at all.
