Snackaroo has some of the most fun artwork that I’ve ever seen in a kids board game. Not only are the characters made from plasticine, but their combination of brightly-coloured, exaggerated animals with food items makes it hard to dislike.
Boiled down to its simplest form, Snackaroo is a three-round game of finding matches. Each round is slightly trickier than the last, with you breaking down your pile of cards into smaller piles and then choosing which one you’d like to use to check for duplicates. It’s a little fiddly to manage when compared to other games of snaps or pairs, and that does somewhat contradict the beautiful, approachable artwork that infers that it might be perfect for the youngest of ages.
The reverse side of the cards is likely the cause of most confusion and frustration here. The box contains 5 sets of 18 cards (each with negatives on the back), a further 18 cards (that have positives on the back), 9 further cards that have two animals on them (and positives on the back) and then the fries cards. These 18 and 9 positive-backed cards are the cards that you match with through the three stages, but also serve as a score system, with your own starting cards then counting as negative cards later on.
This is arguably more complicated than it needs to be. Instead the backs could have been plain or indicated the player set they were from and that they were central cards, with the cards simply retained in play spaces for each player, rather than having the player keep a single score pile for the end. It adds more tracking, certainly, but simplifies the set-up. You could also return scored cards to the box in exchange for victory tokens or moving a player token around a tracking board.
Snackaroo is very simple to play, and great to look at, however the disconnect between the rules and efficient token/component management holds it back… which, is a shame as, I repeat, this is game with some of the strongest art I’ve seen in a child’s game for years.
None of this is to say that it’s a bad game, and with house rules or some light tinkering with the box, you can turn this into something that’s as easy to pick up and play as it is to look at.
Snackroo is available now, including from its publisher, Ravensburger.
