Kids of Carcassonne - board games for small children

"Each year, the people of France celebrate a national holiday on July 14th. In Carcassonne, the people mark the day by releasing the sheep, chickens and cows from their pens. All day, the children of Carcassonne make great fun by trying to catch the animals and return them to their pens by dusk"

This is the story-line to accompany this young children's version of the popular Carcassonne board game. The Kids of Carcassonne is released by Rio Grande, and is recommended for 2-4 players for children aged four and over.

Like many German board games, the components are well constructed and designed to last. Kids of Carcassonne, like its more mature namesake, is a tile playing game. The 36 tiles are constructed of heavy coated cardboard. They are durable, large, colourful and feature fun cartoon-like graphics. The "children"are made from brightly painted wood and are an excellent introduction to the "meeple".

The game play is simple. Each player has eight meeples of either red, blue, yellow or green. The tiles are divided up between the players, and placed in a stack face down. Players take it in turns to place tiles to build roads. The tile pieces have pictures, of road segments, buildings, animals and children. The tiles are placed to build or close roads. Closed roads enable the children to get home with their animals. Unlike its more complicated relative, The Kids of Carcassonne tiles can be placed anywhere, and this allows younger children to participate more readily. As each road is completed and closed, players place their meeples on the appropriately coloured tiles. The aim of the game is to be the first to place all your meeples. At first glance it seems that strategy may be minimal. Certainly the strategy is not deep enough to greatly challenge an adult. However, there is sufficient depth to enable young children to grasp some degree of strategy. There are not many games targeted at very young children that achieve this. The strategic play hinges around choosing which roads to complete to enable meeples to be placed without helping your opponents to place their meeples. People may choose to build long roads and place many meeples at once, or short roads that might only enable one meeple to be placed.

So how does it work with young children? I have played this game many times with my girls, aged 2.5 and 4 years old. My four year old daughter received the game when she was about 3.5 years old. Both girls are keen to participate in the game, and my youngest is well able to understand how to place the tiles so they match up neatly. However, she struggles to understand that a road needs to be completed before a meeple can be placed. Incidentally, we don't call them meeple. We call the little wooden figures "children". The four year old understands that the aim of the game is to get her children home, and that she needs to close roads to do so. However, she is yet to fully grasp that closing other people's roads is not in her best interests, and will place a tile close to her rather than closing a road. I usually cue her about where to place tiles to help her close roads that are advantageous to her. She is very keen on winning, and is always open to going along with my suggestions. Some children of her age bracket are able to grasp the underlying strategies, and I am sure she will understand it in time. However, she still derives considerable enjoyment from playing the game. Both girls also like constructing their own maps, and enjoy free play with the components. And me? I enjoy playing this game with them and it is certainly not boring. However it is not a game I would choose to play with adults only. I am looking forward to being able to "play to win" with my girls. For now I play in a way that hopefully helps them to learn and enjoy playing also.

I think that this game has been a good choice for my girls, a fun precursor to the more complicated "Carcassonne". Unlike "Tier auf Tier", I don't think this will be a game they will still play in five or six years, but I am confident it will get played over the next two or three years. And that is more than can be said for most games targeted at this age group!

Rating? 7/10