The Little Orchard by Haba Toys

A few weeks ago I was sent The Little Orchard by Haba Toys to review for IzziWizzi Kids Play Fest.

Let me start off by saying it’s a beautiful looking game. The board, tree and 15 flower cards are made from really thick card with wonderful visual graphics. The raven, large chunky Dice and cherries are all wooden and the basket is just delightful.

The board is cleverly part of the storage box and very easy to put together. There is potentially a weak point inside the box where the tree slots in to. But that would be easy to re-enforce if it ever became a problem.

The object of the game is to try and get all the cherries before the naughty Raven makes it up the path and eats them. Unusually, players work as a team against the raven to do this which makes this game really refreshing.

The children take it in turns to roll the dice and must turn over a card with a matching image. If they find a sleeping animal they make a ‘shhh’ noise and turn the card back over. If they find a ‘cherry’ they take the card out, remove a cherry from the tree and pop it into the basket. If they find a raven they can make a ‘Caw’ noise and move the raven one step up the path before turning the card back over.

I did wonder if my girls would be a little old for this game even though it says 3-8 years on the box (mine at the time of writing this are 6,6 &7) as at first glance it looks very easy and young. But actually it works …well for girls anyway.

Because the card they have to pick is determined by a roll of the dice they must always try and remember where the crow is in all the sets. And that’s where the team work comes in. It’s was really interesting watching my girls being swayed by each other and also trying to convince each other that they were right when they disagreed over which card was ‘safe’.

There are also a couple of ways to make the game harder. One way is to starting the raven one or two steps up the path already. The other way is to constantly mix up the deck of cards when they are turned back over leaving it very much to chance.

I really liked this game as did my girls. It ranges in price between £15-£18 which may seem a little expensive but the quality is so good that I think it’s worth the price.

We were sent this game for free to review by IzziWizzi Kids. All thoughts, content and images are my own apart from this lovely little badge at the end. That belongs to IzziWizzi