Gearhead Mom

Monday, December 08, 2008

Green Eggs and Ham Speedy Diner

Posted by Missy W. @ 7:16 AM

Seattle-based I Can Do That! Games™ was founded by Jacobe Chrisman, formerly Cranium’s head of product development, responsible for many of that company’s award-winning games for children. The team at I Can Do That! Games believes that “play is essential for the development of happy, healthy kids. Playing games is all about experiencing play with others. Taking turns, teaming up, helping each other, winning, and even sometimes losing are important life lessons we practice as we play games.” I couldn’t agree more. So when they asked Sy and I to review a new game on the scene, we gladly took on the request.

I Can Do That! Games uses well-known Dr. Seuss characters in all of their games, a bonus for me because like most of you, Dr. Seuss and I go way back. And since I am the one playing the game with Sy, it’s nice to be surrounded with old friends such as Horton, the Grinch or the goat from Green Eggs and Ham. Green Eggs and Ham - Busy Diner was the obvious choice for us since Sy is so obsessed with cooking, cooking shows, playing chef, and generally leaving all play food items under the coffee table (her “refrigator”).

I am a visual learner, so pulling a game out of the box and reading the instructions is always a challenge for me. I want to rip open the game, set it up and see if I can figure it out. Better yet, I like to have Rog read it all and show me how to do it. It’s not me being lazy, it’s just how I learn. So that’s what we did. Roger read up on it and Sy and I impatiently waited to start the first round. We made ourselves useful by unpacking the pieces. I pulled out the menu-shaped timer, noted that it had batteries and recoiled. Begin rant. I am a total HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) and I LOATHE loud toys. Loathe them. They make me want to run shrieking from the building. We have enough noise in our life as it is, I don’t need a kid toy that has one volume cranked to ELEVEN at all times. Why don’t toy makers believe in volume control? End rant. So needless to say, I started out feeling a bit skeptical. Could I handle another toy yelling at me? We have Diego and his Rescue Center for that. But I was committed to the game,  I took a deep breath and forged ahead.

Here’s the object of the game: Players work together to deliver food to the café guests as fast as they can. Take turns being the Chef calling out orders to the other players, who serve as waiters, running back and forth to pick up the foods and deliver them to the correct customers. The faster you deliver the food, the more tips you’ll make! But watch out—when you hear “Bugs in the Kitchen!” you’ve got to race back to the dining room and check all the tables for insects. Players use color, shape and other pre-reading skills to identify food items and counting to collect their reward coins.

This game is geared for players aged 4-8. Sy is only 3.5 but she realllly likes rules, so we figured she’d be a pretty good player. Since the games are focused on movement, you are required to set up the game pieces all over the room. That’s easy to do if you don’t have piles of detritus all over your living room like I do. So we started by tidying up the living room so Sy didn’t bruise herself running from spot to spot. Bonus: I got a clean(er) living room out of the deal. We put the mouse, goat and fox (the diners) in different corners of the room per the instructions. Sy was the waitress and Roger was the chef, wearing the hilariously cute chef’s hat and everything. The chef is in charge of the LOUD musical menu-timer, and with that role comes the responsibility of shouting out the orders to the wait staff. You have to click the menu-timer three times per “order” to move the dial around, which was a bit too tricky for Sy. Roger and I had to focus pretty hard in the beginning to get into the click-click-click rhythm. I bet an older kid would have no problem, but for our age range, I think it works best for an adult to be the chef. So we put the pile of food out for Sy to grab easily and off we went. Boy that musical timer is LOUD. Jeezo. It plays music and random comments at a frantic pace as the chef calls out the orders, such as “The goat would like some purple pancakes!” You don’t need to be able to read to use the timer, so any player can be the chef, as long as they can get the clicking pattern down. Sy forgot where the diners were from time to time, so I would remind her and point her in the right direction. The food tiles are two-sided, so the wait staff has to flip it over to find the right color. It’s not a competition, it’s collaborative, so if there are more than one waiter, the kids are cheering each other on and running helter-skelter. Sy and I did a round with both of us as waitresses and it just meant that Roger had to call out the orders even faster since two of us were delivering food. I do think it would be a little slow if there were three waiters, though - especially if a kid is the chef. It’s hard to go fast when you have to click it three times per order. I think if you have a big ass living room then it would work well with more kids, since they’d have more running time in between orders. Our little old house just doesn’t have that sort of square footage. That and even after I cleaned it, um, well, let’s just say there were still plenty of piles of detritus.

Some of the food tiles have bugs on them (How realistic! How gross!). So if the manic timer yells, “Bug Bonus!” the wait staff runs around and checks if there are bug-laden food items on the diners’ plates. If they find any creepy crawlies, they get a coin for each one. What sort of restaurant gives the waiters tips for bugs? Shouldn’t they be taking them back to the kitchen instead of just getting monetary encouragement? I find that part of the amusing if not completely random.

Sometimes the menu-timer throws a curve ball and the chef announces that the diners want to send food back (but not the ones with bugs?) or swap foods with another diner - sometimes just a purple food, or sometimes the whole plate. This also confused Sy from time to time, but mainly because she’d forget where the diners were sitting. Again, I think an older player would be fine with that. Because Sy is so into food (and because she’s a control freak like most self-respecting three year olds), she started deciding what the diners wanted, versus what Roger called out. This of course screws up the outcome of the game, because at the end of each round, the menu shows what each diner is supposed to have. Sy didn’t care, but some game players might (like her father). Each correct food on each plate garners a coin on the chart, which is a round piece that goes from 1 to 12 like a clock. The object of the game is to get all 12 coins on the chart. It took us about three rounds to complete the chart. There are 16 different menus to use, so the game is not quickly repeated.

So even though the menu-timer is loud as hell, I will give this game four stars because my kid loves it. Is volume control a crime? I guess they figure kids will be screaming and yelling over the timer and the chef, so therefore it has to be set at “rock concert” levels? I know, I have to relax about the volume, but really, it makes me want to go on a crime spree.

Snapshot:
-All in all, Sy really enjoys the game. She doesn’t mind the frantic music, the shouting narrator (“HURRY HURRY HURRY! BUG BONUS! BUG BONUS!”) who competes with the shouting chef. Roger even put tape over the timer for me, which didn’t really help.
-It definitely gets kids moving (and you moving some furniture).
-It’s great for a rainy day, that’s for sure.
-It’s a good game to play as a family, Sy got a huge kick out of her parents wearing a silly chef’s hat.
-The game site says you can get it exclusively at Toys R Us but I saw it at Target the other day. I could only find it online at Toys R Us.

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