Ravensburger Snails Pace Race - Children's Game

We bought this game for our son when he was barely 3 years old.He is now almost 6 and still loves it.The game is simple enough for him to play with his friends without adult help, since everything is based on colors and no reading is required.The beauty of this game, though, is that children can have fun without competing against each other.Since all children move all of the snails, it is the snails who race and who win or lose.Since no child loses, there are no hurt feelings.Plus, it's fun to try to guess which snail will win!

I love this game!!My son has been playing it for 2 years now.He's 4.5 yrs old right now.It's so easy to learn and great fun for up to 6 people!!We make it a little more challenging by taking two colored snails each and trying to remember which are ours when the colors are rolled.For our family of 3, that makes it lots of fun!I advise everyone to buy this game if there are young children in your house.You will NOT be disappointed.

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The game board is poorly designed. Considering that it's intended for 3 year olds, there are one or two confusing aspects to the board that should not have been. See last paragraph below to save a few bucks.

First of all, each colored snail should have its "track" marked in its own color, so that a 3 year-old can clearly see and understand that the piece stays in the same lane. On the first few plays, my 3 year-old would move a snail forward and over to an adjacent track in front of another snail.Sounds silly, but it confused the next turn's play ... and you just try explaining to a stubborn 3-year-old the error!

Secondly, the snails are actually LONGER than the squares they occupy. They overlap the square's front & back edges. So when my 3-year-old advances a snail, he naturally jumps the snail to the next "visually available" square, i.e. he advances the snail two paces, rather than one. It's too trivial for me to correct his play, but very odd for a company like Ravensburger to flub this up so badly.

These sound trivial, but for such a simple, simple game as this, it is amazing that they got it so wrong. It's as though they threw the game together without testing or thinking about it, like a trivial whip-it-out-and-sell-it-fast game.

In the end, I took a piece of cardboard, bought six little tubes of paint and a magic marker, and drew my own board for the game correcting those flaws.

That said, I note that when it comes to introducing a 3-year-old to the idea of board games, I suppose I don't know of any other games that are quite this simple."Max" is a great game but slightly more complex, as is "Orchard", so this is the only one I know of.

I would suggest, instead of buying this game, that you do the following (which I am confident will not violate the copyright!) as a fun project for you and your tot:(a) Choose THREE colors (buy 50-cent tubes of paint at any craft store), (b) make a racetrack on a strip of foam-board or heavy cardboard about 6x20 inches or so, mark it with a black marker into 2x2 squares, paint each long "strip" of squares with one of the three colors to make three parallel tracks, and note the start and end spaces in some way (e.g. an arrow and a star), (c) take a blank die (wood cubes are sold in most craft stores for less than a buck) and paint the six sides with those 3 colors (two of each), (d) find three pegs or pieces to paint with those colors --and voila, you have a single-dice racing game that will be every bit as fun as this game or better.What is more, creating this game would be a perfect arts-and-crafts moment for you and your child to enjoy.To play the game, set the 3 pieces at the start position, and roll the die, moving whatever piece whose color comes up. "Let's see who gets to the end first!" is enough to motivate any kid."Yay! Red's the winner!" and your kid will love it. "I made that!" as mine proudly announces. Enjoy.

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I've been playing this with kids for about 9 years my 4 year old enjoys it just as much as my 14 year old did years ago.It's interesting, tho, that kids will still pull for their favorite colored snail!Really fun without complexity of some games for preschoolers

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my son does not yet understand the "choosing a color" and sticking to that same color throughout the game thing.this is a great game that teaches him to take turns without getting frustrated that he can't be the same color as momma.We love it!It is a great introduction to more sophisticated board games.