oskari
Finland
Helsinki
corals... yummy!
I'm a blood-sucking fiend! Look at my outfit!
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Thanks to Santa, some serious testing was done on Christmas Eve by a 5-year-old and her 6-year-old sister. Since I was the only gamer available at the time, it was my duty to explain the rules and be the adult they could beat up. And beat me they did, seriously, and several times in a row
In the first round, all pawns were quickly covered by ghosts, and the younger girl very soon forgot under which ghost her pawn was. Regardless of this, she carried on happily moving the ghosts around, and doing some really surprising swap actions. Her sister had been very careful in memorizing the location of her own pawn, but when the 5-year-old swapped the places of two ghosts that were on the same step, that finally made the trick. The 6-year-old chose one of those two ghosts thinking it's her pawn in there, and moved the ghost to the victory. She was very surprised and not at all disappointed when she found out that she wasn't the winner after all, instead she immediately asked for a rematch.
The second round went pretty similarly. The younger one carried out her turns happily, very quickly, and completely without any knowledge of the location of her pawn. The older girl paid close attention, but once again got fooled when her ghost had to share a step with another ghost. This time the ghosts on the step weren't even swapped, it was completely her own mistake.
Now the 5-year-old cheerfully declared that she wants to play once again. So off we went, and this time their Granny also joined the game. The game proceeded very differently this time, but was equally as fun as the first two rounds. The 5-year-old got an early lead and it took some time before the pawns were turned into ghosts since only Granny threw any ghosts. The 5-year-old was clearly aiming for a win but finally got confused when the swapping started to happen. When we packed the game away she loudly and happily declared "That was quite scary!"
The 6-year-old decided that it's time for trying some of her presents as well, so I played two rounds of Dawn Under with her and Granny. Soon after we were done with Dawn Under, the younger sister surprised everyone by fetching her Spooky Stairs, prying it open (there seems to be a strong ghostly vacuum in the box), and calling "Daddy, try and dare play this with me!". Then she gave a perfect explanation of the rules to her father.
The 5-year-old had obviously given serious thought to the game during the break. She now tracked her pawn very carefully, and cheerfully announced when she finally forgot where it was. When she did not win, she chose another color for the next round. When the winners were found she reminded them that "You have to go BOO!".
One of the rounds was hilariously chaotic because the first seven die rolls were all ghosts. Another two were quite tight since both girls concentrated on winning. The girls kept asking for new rounds and it wasn't until the fourth round when the 5-year-old finally got tired. We had to nudge her into finishing the game properly, but even that last round was quite fun.
I can't remember who won, since that was really not an issue. The most interesting part of the game, both for children and adults, was finding out whose pawn it was under the winning ghost, and where did the other players end up. That phase was surprising every time. The game was great fun for everyone, and the expressions on the childrens' faces when they knew that the adults had moved the wrong ghosts are something to remember.
The girls were exceptional gamers. In the very first round, I did most of my swapping actions on the ghost hiding the pawn of the 6-year-old. I could see that she did not like those swaps but she put up with it remarkably. During the other rounds the swaps were divided more equally and mostly concentrated on the leading ghost. The girls had no problems with this since they were going for the win, too. The 5-year-old catched on very quickly and played very skillfully in the later rounds. In the first two rounds the 5-year-old tried to cheat twice, obviously wanting to roll a ghost, but did not act up and played on happily when she was told to stop cheating. Later on, her older sister also tried this once but responded just as nicely when she was told to play properly.
A wonderful game. This was clearly the best gaming day I've had for a long time.
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