Photo-A-Day #4485

We received a copy of the Peaceable Kingdom Cooperative game Mole Rats in Space for free to play with and review. Opinions are 100% our own.

Summertime can be a time where you hear the words “I’m bored” all too often. Most often kids want to be entertained and turn off their brains when they get to bored. They use that bored excuse to try and get some screen time. You can counter act that and the dreaded brain drain by engaging with your kids through some cooperative games from Peaceable Kingdom. More often than not the kids really just want to spend time with you or their siblings. Man games make this difficult because they are competitive and someone always ends up the loser.

With a cooperative game no one is excluded and everyone helps each other out to win the game. We’ve played a lot of these games over the years and many of them were for younger kids. We’re starting to move up to the games for older children like our latest game to review, Mole Rats in Space. Andrew is only 5 1/2 but he can play this game for seven year-olds and up without any problem. we’ve even played with other family members and he is great about helping instruct them.

So, what is the game about? Mole Rats in Space is about four Mole Rats on a space station that is being invaded by snakes. The Mole rats have to grab supplies and haul their butts to the escape pod in order to win. Along the way they have to avoid the snakes and the tubes that may shoot them out into space. If they don’t get all the supplies and get into the escape pod then they fail. If they get bit twice by a snake then they fail. If anyone gets shot into space then they fail. There are a lot of ways to fail in this game and that is what makes it so challenging. But, don’t despair, there are those that can help. Your friends.

Each Mole Rat has a snake bite kit. This way, if they get bitten once then can continue on. If they get bitten a second time then the team fails. Each player gets one card at a time. The card can either move a mole rat and / or a snake around the space station. The cards can also move multiple snakes, multiple mole rats or do other things like add additional snakes to the space station. So, as a team you have to make strategic choices to avoid the snakes or to shoot them into the cold embrace of space all while scrambling around the station towards the escape pod and looking for the precious supplies like a navigational map, a radish, duct tape and a toothbrush.

we’ve played the game a few times now and each time it a new challenge. Each player gets one card at a time and when the whole deck of 51 cards is used you had better all be in that escape pod. The nice thing is that once a player gets into the escape pod then they do not ave to stop playing. They use their cards to help the other players move through the game board to the escape pod, too. We’ve won the game and lost the game but each time we play we have fun. In one time playing we got to the very last card to win. This is a fun game for between 2 and 4 players and the suggested ages are 7 and up but with instruction the younger kids will have no problem playing.