Pandemonio is a simple, fun card-swapping game that is overseen by the hilarious Wind-up Colin – a tottering timer coffee cup who marches down his track in the centre of the colourful playing board. It is suitable for aged eight and above, for two to eight players.
Inside the box, it comes with a playing board, Colin the Coffee Cup Timer, two Coffee Cup tracks, eight spike & eight crown playing pieces, 64 playing cards, stickers and instructions. It requires an adult to stick the stickers onto Colin before playing. To set up the game, place the Coffee Cup track in the middle of the playing board. I do find that occasionally the tracks do not stay still on the board and it requires us to put it back again.
There are two levels of play: Pandemonio and Super Pandemonio. In Pandemonio, players only collect cards matching their board space, whilst Super Pandemonio introduces a nasty twist which you can move yourself forward or an opponent backwards.
The aim of the game is to be the first player to travel up the board and back again to your start position. Each player will receive the same number of cards of each picture as there are players. Each turn, players must collect as many cards as possible with the same image that their playing piece is sitting on. Everyone swaps cards (face down) for an equal number of an opponent’s cards. Keep swapping until Colin stops or stop swapping if you have the best cards – then move on by the number of correct cards collected. Colin occasionally fell off his track so we always have to keep an eye on him. With this game, you have to be quick at swapping your cards, if you are too slow, you will lose! We find that we often have to take a peek under our playing pieces for the image we are currently on, as the playing pieces obscure the images.
This is a fairly simple game to play that children will love. Also this game is for up to eight players which makes it a raucous, fun party game. It is available in good toy retailers and Amazon. For more information, please visit https://www.drumondpark.com/
Disclosure: We received the sample for the purposes of writing this review however all thoughts and opinions remain our own. We have included an Amazon affiliate link to the product. If you click on this and buy, we may earn a small commission.