Customer Reviews

Ravensburger Rivers, Roads & Rails - Children's Game

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Even the littlest one (3 years old) loves R, R, & R. He doesn't understand the "game" part, but he loves looking at the pieces, and he has figured out how the matching works.
Treating it more like a puzzle than a turn-based game makes it fun for everybody -- you spend as little or as long on it as you want, and then you come back to it later.
Our household challenge is to use all the pieces in as compact a shape as possible. My husband is obsessed with putting together a perfect rectangle. Hasn't happened yet, but he keeps trying!

Ravensburger products are easy to love because of their high quality. These game tiles (like Ravensburger's puzzle pieces) are thick, colorful with great detail, and wipe clean when you spill on them. I enjoy puzzles and so this is a fun game for me, creating a maze of rivers, roads, and railways that begin and end at houses, bridges, towns and dams. The game can last an overly long time, so my kids don't enjoy it as much.

This game promotes many educational skills, available to use even with very young children,including matching, visual discrimination, vocabulary building, sequencing and in addition it is a fun game to play turning out different picture representation every time!

I was able to play this with my 4 year old daughter and 13 year old step-daughter. While it is a little challenging for my youngest (the 5 year old designation is probably correct), we all were able to play on somewhat equal footing. We played in a non-competative fashion but I could see how this game has the potential of being very competative with a bunch of adults. I highly recommmend it as a great family game!

Summary: I'd have given this game 5-stars but it just doesn't have the replay value I had hoped for. My older daughter enjoys this game but it's not her favorite. Nice game.

Quality: As with other Ravensburger games, the game is well-crafted. The pieces are thick cardboard and the edges have not shown any signs of peeling into layers as do many cheap puzzle pieces.

Game play: Simple pattern recognition game. Each player maintains a cache of 10 cards and takes turns adding to an amorphous splay of cards having any combination of a river, road, and/or rail. It's not a competitive game but I'm sure it could be morphed into one. My 3-year old got the concept right away so game play was civil and frustration-free. Takes an average of 15-20 minutes to complete.

Depending on how things pan out, you may need a bit of floor space to accommodate the full deck. Often times roads ended up stretching under the couch and we'd have to shift the whole construction a few feet.

Thoughts: As someone else noted, if there are more than, say, 4 people, there really aren't enough cards in the deck to make for a good game. Also, I would prefer if the game contained more cards with roads/rails/rivers that forked off into a Tee -- it would make the game a little more interesting and space compressed. As it stands there are maybe (2) forked cards in the deck and the resulting construction usually ends up very long.

My 4 year old son received this game as a Christmas gift, and it's really FUN! It is simple, made of cardboard. It's easy to play for small children, yet involved enough to keep adults interested, too. It has different types of game play as children age or become more proficient at the game. The game is easy, but requires kids to look carefully at the pieces, learn to think strategically, and consider a variety of options as play progresses. It's fun to play for any length of time, which is good for younger kids who don't have a long attention span. My son loves this game, and I have given it to 3 very happy recipients for birthdays since we received it. I definitely intend to purchase more games from this company. I am a former toy buyer and developer, and I really appreciate a great game when I see one!

When my kids first saw this game, they thought it looked boring. They weren't too interested it in when we were explaining the rules. Then they started looking at the pieces and it was like a spark went off, and all they wanted to do was figure out how it went together.

I have three girls ages 3,5, and 11, who all enjoy playing this game. My 3 year old is able to match most pieces, some of the pieces have starts or stops and those throw her off, but she still enjoys the game. We play games every night before bed, and this one is brought out at least once a week. We play it following the rules given, however my girls also enjoy using it as more of a puzzle and building long connecting pieces all over the floor. They will sit and piece it together for an hour or more, and that is a long time for them to play with anything.

This can be a really long game. We limit the game by starting with fewer pieces, or setting a timer and whoever has the fewest pieces when the timer goes off wins.

Ravensburger makes fabulous games and this is no exception. It is a great game to add to your families game night rotation.

In this simple but lovely game, players place tiles to connect rivers, roads and train tracks that meander across a picturesque landscape. The game can be played competitively, with each player trying to get rid of his or her tiles first, or cooperatively with everyone trying to put all the tiles together. Although the simple rules mean that even young children can play, learning from the challenge of matching the edges of the pieces, the game's visual appeal makes it enjoyable for older children and even the adults playing along, too. Many (most?) of the pieces are illustrated uniquely, featuring lakes, farms, cityscapes, trains, people... as a child I delighted in discovering the details in the pictures and imagining what it would be like to enter the landscape.

The pieces are sturdy cardboard, plenty durable for normal gameplay use - they would not survive immersion in water or other such extreme conditions, but it's not a fragile game by any means. There are no small pieces that a child could swallow or choke on.

My fond memories of this game from my childhood inspired me to buy it recently for a friend's kindergarten son and his younger sister. They enjoy it as much as I did - and so do his parents!

This is a game that I truly enjoy playing with my 4-year-old son. It's fun for anyone ages 4 and up who enjoys puzzles. You can play the game as directed by taking turns placing pieces, but you can also work together like you would on a puzzle. My son also has fun putting the pieces together by himself. You need quite a bit of table or floor space and good chunk of time to play the game to completion. Good exercise for everyone's brains!

My husband and I LOVE this game! I bought it for my 7 yo daughter, and she does understand the strategy and enjoy it, but it can be a long game and she usually loses interest before it is over. My 4 yo likes to look at the pictures, but that's about as far as it goes for her!

Each tile has some combination of a river, a road, or a railroad track. Many of the cards have clever little sketches (people swimming in a lake, a castle, a waterfall, a garbage can ...). Gameplay is similar to dominoes. On your turn, you need to take a card from your "deck" that matches one of the end cards in play on the table - this can be more challenging than it at first seems.

Only downside of this game: it requires a LARGE table!