Eco Town Game by Wonderworld – AD sent for review

disclosure:  we were sent the item mentioned for the purpose of review

You may remember that I’ve reviewed a few Wonderworld games and toys before – The Eco-house, Penguin Rescuer Game and the Trix Track 2 Way Flipper, all on behalf of the Toadstool online toy shop.  Well, The Toadstool decided we needed a new challenge, and knowing my son’s fascination with recycling bins they thought we might quite enjoy the Eco Town Game, also by Wonderworld.

Wonderworld is a Thai company that has a history of using rubberwood in their production, they also have a policy of replanting a tree for every tree they use.  At least 70% of their packaging is made from recycled paper – so this game really puts their beliefs into practice.

Eco Town Game, Wonderworld

The Eco Town game is a board game suitable for children aged 3 years and over, so perfect for my little boy who will be 4 in a few months time.  The game consists of 4 19x19cm thick cardboard game boards…

Eco Town Game, Wonderworld

….. which can be played with separately, or joined together in a number of ways.  I loved this idea – it makes each game different.  We’ve played with 2 players having one board each, 2 players have 2 boards each and joined in a square as I’ve shown above, and when Daddy P and my boy played today they had 4 boards in a row and the road could still run through each board.

Each board has 6 different coloured circles as shown below ….

Eco Town Game, Wonderworld

The object of the game is to be the first player to complete their Eco Town by rolling a coloured dice and placing the correct coloured Eco play piece on the correct circle.

Eco Town Game, Wonderworld

As you can see, each rubberwood play piece has an Eco message – wind turbine, water-butt, recycling bin, solar panelled house, tree, and bicycle. The rubberwood pieces are really tactile, and the game obviously encourages colour recognition.  My only criticism of the game itself is that he really struggled to tell the orange and red colours on the board apart the first few times we played the game.  The shades are quite close, perhaps a brighter orange shade would help?

The official rules state that if you roll the dice and it lands on a colour that you’ve already claimed, then you must give the playing piece from your board to your opponent, and if they have that piece already, then your piece is surrendered.  We haven’t played the game in this way yet, if we roll a colour we already have then we’ve just missed a go.  So again, different ways to play the game.

He understood how to play this game quickly and has really enjoyed building his Eco Town, sometimes we’ve just worked together to build all of the Eco Town’s – so real teamwork rather than competitive play.  Lots of different play options which I think is great.

Eco Town game, Wonderworld

There are also lots of discussion opportunities with this game – what does each play piece represent?  What do they each mean for the environment?  How can we help to look after the environment?  My son has already come across most of the items in the game with his Wonderworld Eco House.  He loves Wind Turbines as there are large wind farms near Granny’s house in Spain, and a few houses in our road have Solar Panels on their roofs.

I can see him using this game as part of his imaginary play – linking it up with his Eco House, his train set and playmat.  We’ve all been really impressed with the games play potential and you can see how much he enjoyed it in our Vlog here…

The rubberwood play pieces are supplied in brown paper bags rather than plastic, a nice touch.  I have one slight niggle with the packaging – the game box itself is made of very flimsy cardboard, much thinner than in any of the other game boxes we have from Wonderworld.  I can see this box getting torn quite easily, which would be a shame, as I think we’ll have plenty of years worth of play from the game itself.

The Eco Town Game is currently priced at £19.50, and we give it a big thumbs up, as there is lots of play potential with this game.

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