Customer Reviews

LEGO Creationary Game (3844)

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The game is similar to Pictionary but instead of drawing, you use Legos.

What is in the game:

-- a Lego Dice, which has the categories that can be found on the cards (Buildings, Nature, Things, Vehicles) as well as a You Choose and Double (which is like You Choose but you get double points if you guess.

-- a set of 96 cards divided into Easy, Medium and Hard that have pictures on them for different categories that are on the Lego Dice (Buildings, Nature, Things, Vehicles)

-- a building tray to sort the pieces by color

-- an assortment of 338 Lego pieces

How to Play:

The instruction booklet describes several different ways you can play the game, but all basically come down to building what is on the card and having someone else guess what you built. The game itself can be pretty challenging -- even for adults. My 5-year-old was able to play it though, and I think most kids familiar with Legos could play it. The recommended ages are 7 and up.

My Thoughts:

I think it is creative way to play with Legos, and a game that the entire family could participate in -- even my husband enjoyed playing it! I think it definitely encourages imagination and creativity. I also appreciate that Lego provided an assortment of ways to play ... and I'm sure most families could think up their own rules to adapt their own needs. This is only one of a whole new series of games by Lego but we chose this one because it seemed to the most open-ended and best suited to the age of our son. When he gets older, I'm sure we'll be checking into some of the other Lego games that are just being released.

My boys, 9 and 11, have Minotaurus and Magikus from the new line of Lego games. They enjoyed those and bought Creationary today. Even though Creationary seems like it would be more creative, they don't give you nearly enough bricks to build the items on the cards. The boys ended up frustrated that they couldn't build what they wanted with the amount of bricks they're given. Being one of the most expensive of the Lego games, I expected much more from it. Minotaurus and Magikus are cheaper and much more fun in my opinion.

I bought this game as a gift for my Lego-loving 6 year old nephew. He and his whole family seem to enjoy it. He isn't quite ready to play by the rules, but it was easy enough for him to come up with his own style of play. The cards that specify what you will build don't show Lego constructions, so it takes some imagination to figure out how to make some of the items. How would you build a Lego fly, or zoo or frog? The game includes a good assortment of pieces, including more unusual ones.

I got this on a whim recently, and my husband, my mother, and I played it for hours. Beware, it is incredibly difficult because they don't give you the amount of bricks you really need to pull off your ideas. It requires you to get VERY creative to succeed. On one of the level 3 cards for instance, they have the sydney opera house... WHAT!? BUt regardless, this was a full evening of amusement. My niece (8) and Nephew (12)came over recently, and while they had some difficulty with specifics, they still enjoyed it. For instance there might be a car, but they want you to say formula 1, because otherwise "car" is too simple, but you have to adjust the difficulty as needed. I had an earthmover, and the kids said bulldozer. Close enough, but not at the same time. I would strongly suggest buying a cheap bucket to expand the game with so that the kids have more fun, and the game doesn't drive you insane.

SO much fun though...

We've had this game for a couple of months now and it got a lot of play early on and now no one in the family suggests that we play it whenever we have time for games. First off, we don't have any of the cool new lego kits so I actually felt that there were some really neat pieces that came with the game. There were some fun hinges, springy antennas, spinning disks, and even a long red flame. If we end up truly giving up on the game and assimilating the pieces from this game into our lego collection I'll at least feel that it's not a total waste. Given some of the specialized pieces and the price I've seen for some of the specialized lego kits, the price is actually a reasonable deal.

The game play is frustrating at times. It's essentially Pictionary with legos, but they really didn't put much thought into the rules. Players take turns rolling a die which shows you a topic. You then choose from the easy, medium, or hard deck. We looked at a lot, if not all, of the cards. We could not see what the distinguishing factor was between the easy, medium, or hard cards. The kids chose the easy ones with great frequency but I didn't find them any different than some of the hard cards (or vice-versa).

The pictures on the cards are drawings, and they are rather vague at times. The rules don't offer anything concrete, so you have to decide what you accept as a correct guess. For example, I had a card that had an ocean liner on it. It looked a lot like the Titanic, but I was not sure if the acceptable guess should be "ocean liner" or "Titantic", or even something else. I accepted either, in the end. Many of the cards have this type of vagueness to them. One of the topics is "nature" and those cards are the hardest. I once drew a card that had a picture of a t-bone steak on it. I'm not sure I'd consider that "nature" but I can't tell you how someone would build that out of a few legos. I gave up on that one.

We found that the standard game of going around in turns caused people in our family to become impatient. So, we made for a more-engaging version of the game by having 3 people build at once and the 4th guesses each one. We sometimes gave a point if they were able to guess right in one try, or three tries, and sometimes we said that the builder gets 3 points if the guesser guesses right away, 2 points on the second guess, and 1 point if they guess in 3 tries. Still, I think that there have been enough missed guesses over the games we play that people just found it too frustrating (my daughters are 10 and 12), and I think also that we have such positive associations with legos that turning it into a competitive game seems to really detract from that. I think that's part of what's working against this game, along with the poorly-drawn cards and vague directions.

Keeping it short and sweet, this set has been great. My 5 year old isn't really interested in the playing the game, but she LOVES the idea of looking at a picture and then having to recreate it in lego. Of course you don't need to the game to do this, you could just pick up a magazine and point to a picture lol, but the cards have hundreds of things on them. For sure at her age she needs help with them so it's a great way to buddy system. Usually she has me make the main item and then she makes whatever supplements we'd need. like if we pull a house out of the stack she'll make a stove and microwave while i build the house. Kind of nice extension of the game really, pulling things she's not familiar with and letting her figure out some things that object might be complimentary to.

Definitely there's not enough pieces to make anything grand but honestly the point of the game is to be quick and small but accurate enough that a teammate could guess the object. So in the context of the actual game the number of pieces are probably ok, but for the variation we've been playing i needed to order one of the generic brick supplements.

This is really a great toy though.

This is a fantasic game for those who love lego's and those who used to play pictionary or charades. Great game for the entire family! I just wish they had more types of pieces and figures - but, to handle that we just add more from my son's collection to have a better selection of building pieces.

My son (10) is a LEGO fan, so this game seemed a natural for his birthday. he was excited to get it and play it. One thing that is nice about the LEGO games is that you can customize them and tailor the rules for your enjoyment. For instance, on this game we added a timer where the person had to create his/her lego piece within two minutes. It was an extra challenge and the adults failed miserably - which was fun. My son can not wait to play with his friends. Also, it stimulates the imagination and makes a person "think". So, overall, I would say this game is a winner.

It's a little expensive for what you get and I have no idea how you would build half of the items on the cards but my kids (6, 10, 11) like it and we've had fun together playing it. Understandably on the difficult side for the 6 y/o but great for the other two.

I agree with the negative sentiment here. I like the concept of the rules. You draw a card and have to build from Lego what is pictured. The pictures are just too hard to reproduce with Lego. If you are going to try and play this game you will need to modify the rules--like let the builder pick from any of the 4 pictures so they can make what is easiest.