Customer Reviews

Leaping Lizards

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Leaping Lizards is a wonderful and compact matching game from Gamewright Games, who make a whole line of inexpensive, educational and fun board and card games. Instead of a conventional playing board, the game is played on a long cord which has beads strung on it. The spaces between the beads are the playing spaces, and players race to get their little wooden lizard to the end.

Game play is relatively simple. Each player gets a set of "Creature Cards". Before every round, they pick one of their creature cards to be their match. Then the creature tiles (which are two-sided) and the lead lizard tile are shaken up in the provided cup and spilled out. If the lead lizard tile has a smiley face showing, the player whose lizard is furthest back in the line may move their lizard as many pieces forward as they have matched their creature card to the creature tiles. So if they chose a dragonfly as their creature card and three dragonflies are showing face up, they may move three spaces forward. If the lead lizard tile shows a sad face, the player whose lizard is at the front of the line must move their lizard back as many matches as they've made.

Matching skills are the only essential skill needed for the game, kids who are still too young to read can play this game easily. It's also completely a game of luck, which levels the playing field between different ages of children.

Because of this game's super-compact size, it makes for a great travel game. It'll work on airplanes or in back seats, and kids will have fun with it for hours. The illustrations are wonderful and the pieces are made with real materials. This is a great game!

A game for 3-4 year olds that is actually AGE APPROPRIATE! This neither insults a young child's intelligence nor is too difficult. Anyone with a 3 year-old knows how tough it is finding a GAME s/he actually WANTS to play that teaches turn-taking, counting, and that losing is often only temporary (there are a LOT of position changes in the course of a game). The game is 100% luck, so an older child will become bored quickly, but if you have a 3-5 year old, GET THIS! As with ALL Gamewright games (I own 9 of them), they are simple (unlike Cranium stuff... gads- pieces everywhere!) and visually stimulating.

I use this game for 3-4 year old's as reinforcement for speech therapy. The children I work with adore this game - I like it too. Incorporates matching, counting, color recognition - a great pre-board game. This game can be played quickly to appease the short attention span of little ones!

I bought this for my 4 yr old boy who is way into lizards, but he has no desire to play it. It is kind of slow moving and you do same thing over and over again. We have enjoyed other games much more.

Quality product, but a little hard for grandkids to follow on their own... I think it is more appropriate for children in the upper age limit.

My three year old and I love playing this. Games are short and teach following the rules, taking turns and counting. Probably goes as young as three and on till the fascination with lizards and simple rules fades. Love it!

This is a game that is pure luck, no decisions to be made whatsoever. That makes it only really appropriate for the youngest kids (unless you add wagers or wine to the mix) but, unfortunately, the rules are just complex enough to almost justify that "age five and up" rating. Well, by five or six years old a game that's entirely luck is unlikely to hold their interest for long. (For that matter, I don't think entirely luck based games are the best choice for toddlers either - they get very frustrated when they hit a losing streak and they have NO WAY to turn it around. And when they win, they can't say it was because they really did well - they were just luckier. But at least they can't blame themselves when they lose.)

The really good thing about this game is that it doesn't take more than a few minutes (unlike Candyland, which lasts FOREVER unless you stack the deck), so if you pull it out once in a while as a quick time killer, it should be fine. But I would not suggest buying the game new unless you have absolutely no luck-based games in your house AND your children are very young.

The texture of the box is just marvelous to the touch, however, it makes it very difficult for a child, or even an adult to open. Once opened, it is a very fun game. My five-year-old granddaughter just loves it. She plays with it by herself, making up her own little games with it.

It's just unfortunate that it takes both of us to open the box.

We had to go over the directions quite carefully at first to figure out how to play, but once we got it figured out, it's pretty fun. You have several two sided tiles that you put in a shaker (like Yahtzee) and roll them. These tiles have one of 4 pictures of bugs on each side. You also have 4 cards in front of you which match the 4 types of bugs. Each roll, you turn one of your cards face up at random. However many of the tiles match the bug on your card, you move that many spaces. The twist is that one of the tiles has a smiley face on one side and a sad face on the other side. Depending which face is rolled each time, it means "smiley" for the person in last place, or "sad" for the person in the lead. You either get an extra turn if you are in the rear or have to move backwards if you are in the lead. So this game can take a few minutes depending on if you roll the "smiley" each time or 15 minutes if you roll the "sad face" alot.