Boardgames for kids: Treasure Hunter

Today, we tried Treasure Hunter! The game consists of hiring adventurers to find treasure and hire guard dogs to fend off the goblins that try to steal your newly won phat loot.

Every round, the board is randomly set up with treasures and goblins. Some are good to get, and a few are bad.

The game is a drafting game. Every player gets nine cards with various effects, choose one to keep, and passes the rest of the cards to the next player. After all the cards have been passed around, each player then has a hand of nine cards.

The cards are then shown, and the players get the treasures and defeat the goblins depending on which card they played, The trick is that you either need to have the strongest or the weakest band of adventurers in order to get a treasure. If you have no adventurers, or a medium strength one, you get nothing.

What to keep, what to give...

The game is simple enough for 8 year olds to play. It requires a bit of math - they need to know at least how to add up to a hundred or so, and some simple multiplication.

Rounds are almost simultaneous, which is good for kids, so that they do not have to wait around for a long time before it is their turn.

There is a lot of luck and a lot of guessing involved, which is good for when kids and adults play together. You don't need to dumb down your game for them to win, which is something I hate to do. Theodor Odin barely beat my friend Leif in his very first complete game.

From left to right: Winner, runner-up, happy loser Leif

There are lots of little wins and losses each turn, which makes the game exciting as it progresses. There is no catchup mechanic, cooperation, or sabotage, and hence no kingmaking, which is good in game for kids. You can't really blame other players for deliberately targeting you if things go bad, so less arguments. Well, you can, but... :D

Young kids will probably need some help to do the end of game scoring accurately.

Game time is fairly short, the game takes about 45 minutes to play.