HABA 3678 Animal Upon Animal - Classic Wooden Stacking Game Fun for The Whole Family- English version (Made in Germany)

Product Information

The Family Gamers received a copy of My Very First Games: Animal Upon Animal Junior from HABA USA for this review. The goal of Animal Upon Animal is for players to lose all of their animals and the first player who does is the winner. Dexterity games for this age can be a great way to help kids develop those softer, more controlled movements. Anyways, one title they passed to me was Animal upon Animal: Crest Climbers, a variant of the classic, so let’s dive into that and see what’s going on.

This simplified version of HABA's classic game is made especially for the needs of toddlers and preschoolers. With a whole mountain to play with and some all-new animals, you’re going to … well, you’re going to stack them again and see what happens. And if you roll the sun, you can put an animal on either the meadow stack or the waterhole stack – your choice! If there are fewer than four players, randomly distribute the remaining ones so that everyone gets roughly an equal amount. Just like the “big kid” version of Animal Upon Animal, this version is also designed by Klaus Miltenberger and published by HABA.Often, being able to place two animals is a pretty significant boon, so it’s kind of frustrating when it’s randomly determined. The only issue that my kids had with the components is that the animal tokens only have detail on one side. That is why we hold our products to the most rigorous safety standards and focus on environmentally friendly manufacturing using sustainable materials whenever possible. As a family-owned business operating worldwide, HABA has been accompanying children on all their forays for 80 years - with high quality games and toys that challenge, encourage and above all are a lot of fun!

The kids can select their animal and so each player has 2 duplicate animals and one goes back into the box.Just make sure your attempts to do so don’t cause those bad boys to start sliding and topple the mountain. Players aren’t paying attention to where the weight is; they’re only paying attention to whether or not the animals are lined up on the same axis. I tried 2-player game with one of my kids, and then with both kids as I watched, and it’s not a lot of fun. It follows the same rules as the alternative version of the game with English language packaging but uses a different selection of animals.

I’m pretty sure it evens out on a long enough timetable, so I’m not particularly bothered by Crest Climbers at any player count. The experienced player version can take a decent amount of time, since so few animals are removed from play. Sure, in the past I’ve found some games that I’ve convinced them to play but I lose more than I win with that battle.Players are trying to stack all of the animals before the wooden crab makes it to the end of the sun tile path. Within a couple of months he went from only being able to stack one animal directly on top of another to building a tower of animals manipulating the orientation to keep the tower standing.

These rules only allow a player to select one to two animals based on the number that fall (one animal if one falls or two if two or more fall). We have a house rule which my kids think is a blast because we actually do an animal draft with a 3-player game and we always use this rule with this player count. HABA is internationally known for producing German quality wooden toys and award-winning games; many of which were developed by Educators and NeuroScience Professionals to help incorporate crucial areas of learning into play. I was surprised to find kids laughing while demoing games and that every game on display was kid friendly (that also have educational undertones as well).

They love being able to control their turns and even though Animal Upon Animal uses a die that adds a randomization element, the outcome is controlled by the player’s actions. But the roll of the die may make it such that mom or dad has to place something a bit more precarious that will make the pile come crashing down. The preschooler loved stacking the animals and knocking them down (you may remember his flavor of help from our Rhino Hero Junior review). If one or two animals fall off because a player tried to stack, then that player has to add these animals to their animal total.