John Farrell
Australia
Aspley
Queensland
Averagely Inadequate
Buster Keaton from 'Go West'
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It's hard to find a game to play with 4 year olds that parents can tolerate, especially given that the 4 year old will want to play it over and over and over. Many parents I play with remark "we need a new game, I'm sick of the other ones". Viva Topo! is one of those games that you can acquire to widen the variety available to you and the little ones.
The plot of the game is that the mouse families are moving from the hard life in the house to the Land of Cheese. This is a bold move, because there is a hungry cat along the way and many of the mice will die along the way. The cat provides a lot of excitement and tension in the game, and also helps to keep it relatively short (about 20 minutes).
All the mice start in the house. The cat is on the path between the house and the Land of Cheese, but he's got quite a way to travel before he becomes dangerous. On their turn, the players roll a die labelled 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. They may move one of their mice that many spaces, but if they rolled a 1 the cat moves forward 1 space as well. Actually, at the end of the game, the cat moves 2 spaces, which is brutal. If the cat moves onto the same space as a mouse, or passes a mouse, the mouse is removed from the game... yum yum miaow.
The mice have a slim chance of making it to the Land of Cheese, but along the way there are other houses that they can hide in. Once a mouse enters a house he decides to live in that house and never gets to the Land of Cheese... but he does receive a piece of cheese worth 1, 2, 3 or 4 points for his trouble. The further he has moved away from the house the more points he receives in the house. Any mice who make it to the Land of Cheese receive a 6 point piece of cheese.
It seems the cat has a mind of its own. Sometimes it moves quickly, sometimes slowly. This is very exciting if you're 4. A friend of mine reported that in a 2 player game with his daughter the cat didn't catch any mice at all. You have to keep a constant eye on the cat to make sure that you're safe, and also that you're taking enough risks to score enough points to win the game. And as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men...
The game is also insanely cute. A friend of mine said she felt that females would be disadvantaged because rather than trying to win the game they'd be trying to save the mice, whereas I callously sacrifice two mice each game with a second thought. However that friend is a veterinarian, maybe it's just her. Won't somebody think of the cat?
There are a couple of (slight) downsides to the game. The mice are quite unstable and tend to roll over, so there's a bit of adjustment required. Also apparently the colours are pretty hard to tell apart if you're colour-blind. The game (in Australia) is quite reasonably priced if you're a game geek, but it's maybe at the expensive end for children's games - it is value for money, but it is more expensive than a game of Snap!
What can kids learn? Counting, taking turns, how to lose, all of those usual things. They can maybe try to assess risk and make decisions based on expected outcomes. Almost certainly, though, they will have a fun exciting time, and occasionally even beat Dad.
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