Second Look—Buzz, Great Cheese Chase, and What's It?

After a very nice visit with the folks over at Peacable Kingdom while at Toy Fair, they sent me over a few of their new games for review. The first of these games was Buzz, a cooperative children’s game where each player is a bee trying to gather all the nectar of its color. All the bees need to collect all the nectar before the bear gets to the hive. On each player’s turn they roll a die and move exactly that many spaces on the board, trying to find the quickest route to all their nectar. If a paw is rolled, the bear moves one space closer to the hive. Once all the players have their nectar and get back the hive, they win. Be careful, though. It’s game over if the bear reaches the hive first.

The game is simple, but a lot of fun. My wife and I played will all three of our children, and they have a blast trying to find the best routes across the board and helping each other out.
The next game we tried was The Great Cheese chase. This is another cooperative tile where all the players control 3 mice trying to make it to the attic for a cheese party before Tiger the cat makes his way up there. Each player spins the spinner and moves one of the 3 mice that many spaces on the track. There’s a spot on the spinner to move Tiger, too. If a player lands on Tiger, or if Tiger lands on a mouse, they move back to start. Luckily there’s catnip tokens on the board that you can use to move Tiger back a space.

At first I didn’t think much about this game. It seemed way to easy, and we won, leaving Tiger in our dust. Several other plays later, Tiger proved to be a bit more formidable foe that we first thought. Overall the kids had a lot of fun, but mommy and daddy just weren’t feeling it. In the end, that’s not really what matters. As long as the intended audience had a great time, it’s a winner.

Last was What’s It?, a cooperative party game for slightly older children. Players flip over a card and are timed trying to guess what the object looks like based on a die roll for what the item is supposed to be used for. Each match between players scores a point, while items with no matches score points for The Doodler, the game’s built in antagonist. Reach the score goal before The Doodler to win.

We had a lot of fun with this one, but our younger kids had a hard time with the time limit and their writing skills. The box says 8 and up, and I think that’s a pretty fair estimate for this one.