Mystery Garden

Subject: General
Category: Art/Reasoning
Ages: 4 and up
# of players: 2 - 6
Time to play: 30 minutes
Mechanics/Game Type: Q&A

Ratings (1 to 5)

Educational Value: 4
Gaming value: 4
Aesthetic value: 4
Price value: 3
Ease of play: 4
Younger adaptability: 3

My comments:
Now here is a game that you will enjoy playing with your younger children. Not your run-of-the-mill match your color, count the spaces type of game. Basically this is a game of 20 questions (or 15 as the game suggests) using a darling board with lots of details. One player takes a tile with an item from the board pictured on it. The other players take turns asking yes or no questions, moving the pawn ahead one space for each question, until someone guesses what is on the tile. The player who guesses correctly gets the tile and after a set number of rounds the person with the most tiles wins.

Searching out details on the high quality board is the best part. Interestingly when I did a search for this item I found there are two different boards available, one with a castle scene and another, the one I have with a country house scene. Kris even suggested making a board out of a print of a famous painting that you are studying with your children for art class. Two color copies of the print, one for the "board" and one for the tiles to be cut out. What a brilliant and inexensive game to add to your art study!

Although four is already a good young age for game-playing, you could still make this adaptable to younger children by having them find items that you call out to them or use the board for a game of I Spy.

BoardGameGeek.com link to this game:
http://boardgamegeek.com/game/1216