Orchard Toys Robot Run Game

When we are asked to be brand ambassadors for Orchard Toys I was very excited as we already have a number of their games which are a firm favourite in our house. The first game which we have been asked to review is the Orchard Toys Robot Run Game which is a new game in there Autumn 2015 range . Having been on holiday for the past couple of weeks it gave us the perfect opportunity to test it out. As like many of the Orchard Toy games it comes in a small box which makes it the ideal travel companion not taking up much space in the suitcases.

Things you need to know:

• Age range – 3 to adult – Monkey turned three in June so this is ideal for him
• Number of players – 2-4
• Contents – the game contains 40 robot cards divided in four colours – red, yellow, green and blue plus one rainbow paint brush card. Which Monkey always looks for before I start dealing to ensure it is his allotted five cards. Within the cards there are ten different types of robots. The rainbow card allows the holder to choose the colour of the robot the next player needs to lay.
• Aim of the game – is to be the first player to have laid all their cards. You do this by matching your card either by the colour or the shape of the robot to the card laid by the previous player. If you can’t go you need to pick up a card from the centre pile. If all the cards have been used then you turn the existing pile over and re-shuffle and use these.
• Skills – great for colour recognition and observation skills. Often Monkey would get carried away and think that he couldn’t go because he didn’t have the right colour. But will some gentle encouragement he would take a second look at the robot shape and realise he could, as we played more he got more use to looking for the robot shapes. Helping him to match pictures which are the same but different colours. We have developed our own way of describing each robot – the one with the wheels, googley eyes or dial. Therefore also continuing to help his language development. Due to the type of game it also teaches turn taking – something Monkey struggles with!

We had great fun playing with it while away, when playing with just Monkey and me it would take 5-7 minutes a game (and I would influence the play where possible to ensure he could continue to lay his cards) . However once you increase the number of players it can last quite a bit longer. We actually played it with five people while away and it latest about 15 minutes. Due to the competitive nature of the game Monkey’s interest did not fade. We actually played four times in a row for about an hour, only then did he start to loose interest.

We have taken the game a step further also using the cards to practice Monkey’s sorting skills first by colour and then by shape. It would be great where there is a younger sibling starting to learn their colours as they could just use the cards to start to learn colour recognition. Monkey knows most of his colours now so this didn’t really test him. Although the robot ‘type’ did.

Things I love:

• It is simple to play and easy to set up
• The game is the usual high quality that I have come to expect from Orchard Toys – the cards are very thick and don’t bend. The pictures are bright and colourful.
• If you loose the instructions you can download them from the Orchard Toys website
• Its great for kids with short attention spans

The game retails at £7.50 and you can find it here on the Orchard Toys’ website. I would definitely recommend the game and can see me buying further sets for Christmas presents.

Mudpie xx

We were sent Robot Run by Orchard Toys for the purpose of a review, all opinions are my own