Takamachi

How good is your eyesight? How fast can you count? How loud can you shout? In Takamachi by FLEXIQ you need to be hot on all these skills and more! And with this game aimed at age 5+, there are going to be plenty of fast thinking, even faster talking kiddos primed and ready to take the win!

ROLLAMACHI

The game play is simple; 12 custom dice are divided equally between the players The dice have icons on them including crescent moons, hearts, suns, and stars. But the background colours can be different e.g. heart on a green background and another with a heart on a red background.

Everyone rolls their set simultaneously Then the race begins to try and spot the shape or colour that appears the most often in the combined pool – once the fastest player has shouted the number of the colour or icon they think is showing up more than any other, the sand timer gets flipped and other players have 10 seconds to spot a mistake and find something that appears more frequently. Whichever player was correct gets to discard one of their dice, and the winner is the player with no dice left!

By way of an added twist, if two identical shape and colour dice appear after rolling, the first player to shout “TAKAMACHI” wins that round automatically and discards one of their dice!

Final Thoughts

This is a very light, colourful, easy 5 minute game that kids will love! Rolling handfuls of dice and shouting are two of the best things about playing games when you’re little (and sometimes big!) so it’s not hard to get this to the table. The added bonus is that it’s helping to develop essential skills at the same time – perception, visual acuity, reaction times, information processing, and pattern matching, not to mention social skills and grace in winning and losing!

But that’s not to say it isn’t enjoyable for the bigger kids around the table too! One of our go-to games when we are out and about is DOBBLE, and this quick-spotting icon identifying gameplay has that same vibe. And I definitely feel my visual and speed to shout skills being exercised in both! I would just say that if you have very wee bairns around the table as well as older gamers, the skills gap may be such that one player might win a lot more than others. But the game only last 5 minutes so the sting is short-lived. Plus there are doubtless house rule based ways to even up the odds a little

The tin it comes in and the dice themselves are super chunky and made to last which is always a bonus in games designed for small children. Plus, it’s super portable and budget friendly.

I’m really looking forward to playing more games from FLEXIQ with our 7 year old son as he really enjoyed TAKAMACHI. And there’s nothing I like more than a gamer parent than seeing my kiddo laugh and smile and have a great time when playing something that’s good for his brain!