Today I wanted to share our newest educational game and let you know what I think. It’s called Brainbox, and there are a number of different variations (geography, science, history, etc). We got the world history version as that fit with our homeschoool theme this year.
The idea of the game is that you pull a card, and get 10 seconds (it has a nice little sand timer) to memorize the facts and images on the front. Then you flip the card over, and roll a die to chose one of the 8 questions about the card. If you get it right, you get a point. It’s a quick playing game that doesn’t require any setup. We usually play until the winner reaches 10 points.
Things I Liked
I like that the game play is fast and doesn’t take up a whole table with cards and a board. Our history set offered a great range of topics and truly covered history from the stone-age to the modern Internet age. Most of the topics were expected, like the French Revolution, but there were some that covered specific people, like Nelson Mandela.
Facts are presented in very short snippets and bullet points, perfect for quick memorizing. Each card has several illustrations on it too. It may not delve into the deeper stories, but sometimes just getting the basics down is the first step in grasping events of the past.
Things I Didn’t
My biggest disappointment was the number of cards in the box. When I looked at the pictures and the size of the box, I presumed there would be a couple hundred cards, offering a ton of learning and facts. Well the cards are actually printed on very thick card stock (like a board book), and the set only had 70 cards. Not terrible, but it won’t take too long to simply memorize the details after playing for a while.
Also, of the 8 questions on each card, several weren’t fact-based at all. They were just prompts to see how well you remembered the images. Things like, “what was the color of the flag on the ship?” or ” was the soldier holding a gun?” Fine for a simple memorizing game, but not really all that helpful for learning history.
Take a Look
The cost was reasonable for the game so overall I’m happy with it. I had originally planned on getting some of the other subjects, particularly their animal one, but probably won’t now. We still enjoy playing but not enough to get additional games, mainly because there are so few cards in each set. Still, no regrets.