A publisher I often recommend for games with young children, HABA’s new offerings this year at New York Toy Fair did not disappoint, and even included one with some interesting strategic choices to challenge adults.
Luxantis ($50, spring) is a labyrinth puzzle with a lighted board, memory element, and tower defense section. Players roll the die and press the matching button to light up spaces on the board. Blue spaces are safe. Red spaces send pieces back to the start. Landing on the right spaces allows players to collect artifact used to defeat monsters as they move up another board attacking the castle.
Snail Sprint ($29, now) is a racing game, where players share the racing snails, scoring points (3 points for first place, 2 points for second place, 1 point for third place) only for the snails shown on their card. Each turn, a player rolls two dice and picks a snail color from one die and destination shape from the other. If a snail lands on top of another snail, the one underneath is trapped. Appropriate for snails climbing trees, though, the path of movement also includes the outer edges of the game box—the box is a tin and the snail pieces have magnets.
Honga ($50, March) is a strategic game of survival. The goal is to collect enough food and water, while keeping the tiger from stealing them. When placing the game’s round cards, players have a choice of orienting the printed hand symbols either toward the resources they need to collect or toward the tiger to keep it at bay.