SkillmaticsWord Building Game - Muddled, Fast-paced Word Building Game, Fun for Kids & Families, Gifts for Boys & Girls Ages 8, 9, 10, & Up

I am always a fan of a game if it can help practice a skill, or teach you something. This game fulfills the first requirement. We are a homeschool family and we use this to practice our spelling skills . You basically get five dice and you have to roll them. You have a game board in front of you with a whole bunch of letters. The letters have to correspond with the dice rolled and you have to quickly make a whole bunch of words. This is good for memorization skills. It’s good for me to see where my kids are when it comes to how well they spell. it’s a really quick play game. For us we play for about 15 to 30 minutes. The kids love it and we have a lot of fun with it. It is for ages eight and up. It is super fun to play in a group because you really do have to think fast.

Game play is similar to Boggle, but having to match specific colors makes it more challenging. Using cards instead of a grid of dice eliminates the noise of shaking a lot of dice and it takes up less space. Playing word games with good opponents is a good way to expand your vocabulary.

The basic idea is similar to Boggle. Instead of a grid of independently-rolled letter dice, you have a deck of cards that each have a predetermined grid of letters on them. More variability is added back in by rolling a set of 5 dice to decide which letters from the card you can use; a die may allow you to use any letter, or may only allow using a letter with a particular color background. (There are a few other differences that adapt the game to this method of randomizing, but it's easy to learn and the included instructions are reasonably clear.)The set includes everything you need to play, including a notepad and pencils. Of course you use any paper and writing instrument - or various alternatives if you don't want to constantly throw away slips of paper - but regardless it's nice that you could open the box and start playing with no other materials at all on hand.I don't like when games have a rule or mechanic that depends on color and color alone, because this can exclude colorblind players. This game doesn't entirely get a pass on that front - they could've combined shape or some amount of pattern with the color in the letter backgrounds and on the dice, and this is why I didn't give it a 5-star rating. That said, as color-dependency issues go, this one isn't as bad as a lot I've seen lately. They use just three colors (plus white), and it's a combination that most players will probably be able to distinguish - at least if you play in good light. If you or one of your players do happen to be unable to reliably distinguish the three colors, it probably would be hard to adapt this set, though.More generally, the game is somewhat vision dependent as all players need to be able to see the card without getting in each others' way. The letters are fairly large and clearly printed, but it's certainly not going to work for everyone without adaptation. Taking pictures of the card for individual players is a strategy that may help (if you have smartphones or similar on hand).

As I've mentioned before, we're very much a game-night family, and I'm always looking for new games to freshen up the rotation. This is a fun game for the whole family - even the 8 and 11 year old enjoyed it. It's a mix of all the best word games - with a little luck on what you roll. It's educational while also being fun, and can be a challenge for adults too!I also appreciate how compact this is - you could take this on vacation for a rainy day!

We found this game to be just OK. It wasn’t as fun as we had homes. My daughter is a skilled reader but found this a tad confusing.The cards are colorful and durable. They are easy to read.

This is a really fun game and a real hit with our family! The instructions are very easy to understand and repeated several times in different areas (back of the box, the detailed instructions and a cheat sheet on the back of the instructions).My only suggestion is to clarify the rule "After all players have read their lists and canceled out the commonly appearing words, each player must score their remaining words." Does commonly appearing mean any two players or ALL players. We settled on ALL players, so if there are 3 players and 2 of them have common words, the two players get points since the word was not common to ALL players.To be honest, I'm getting older and starting to search for words in everyday life. I think this game will help activate my brain and maybe give it some exercise to keep in shape (disclaimer, I am not a doctor).Overall, a really fun game that will probably be a mainstay on game night!

I like this game and how it's played. It uses my brain in a different way than most word games as you have to think quick and gather information. Word games have become our favorite competition around here. The pieces are bright and good quality. The game box is compact and doesn't take up much space. It's a nice appealing design that compells you to take a look. There's something about playing games with tangible pieces (compared to electric games) that is still my preferred choice.

This is a super fun game if you like to make up words! This game is a lot like Boggle but a little bit more challenging since you have to pick letters from the colored dice. There's a lot of strategy involved and you have to be able to know a lot of three and four letter words. We played with my 10-year-old and he was having a little bit of difficulty, but we also played with three adults which we're still challenging to come up with words so I recommend playing this with kids that are older than 10.

Value for money. Good quality and very Interesting

All good

Really good game for all age groups

This is a real brain boggled of a game. In a nutshell you have to make as many different words as you can using the colours on the dice and the jumbled letters on the card. It sounds easy but racing against the countdown timer, that definitely seems faulty as I never have enough time, and racing against other players makes it a mad panic. Playing against my children is a terrible situation to be in, they all expect me to win every time but the pressure gets me and I find my 11 year old often beats me. It’s awful.This is such a good game for the family, we have even had a parent off and I’ve played my wife, which didn’t go well but the kids loved the battle. Honestly it’s a good game to get the blood pumping.

- my 10 year old nephew loved it.