Labyrinth, a game to play with the whole family

For years I heard people rave about Labyrinth. I’d even given a copy to a friend for Christmas one year, and I had a copy sitting on my shelves, but for whatever reason we didn’t really pull our copy out all that often. Then I went on a “clear out our game shelves” kick, and put Labyrinth into the play it or give it away pile. Then we played Labyrinth for a bit of gameschooling last week….

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The premise of Labyrinth card game

Basically, you’re all a bunch of treasure hunters who’ve headed into the labyrinth and picking up all the treasures you can as you wander about the labyrinth.

That’s the idea of what it’s like, now how does that play out in Labyrinth gameplay?

The game starts out with a square of 4 cards, and each player has two cards. On your turn you play a card, and then draw a new card.

Simple.

Only it’s not.

Labyrinth card game is a tile laying game

Tile laying games you build the board as you play, another game like this is Carcassone. This makes it a game that needs a nice flat table, so I wouldn’t recommend throwing this in your backpack for a picnic, unlike some of the other card games I’ve got.

 

The fun of playing the Labyrinth board game

When I looked it up, Amazon calls it the Labyrinth board game.

On your turn you lay down a card, you can lay it down in any sort of way you want, it doesn’t have to match any sorts of doors, symbols or anything, actually it’s almost guaranteed it won’t match stuff.

Your goal is to be able to follow a path in the labyrinth from a symbol on the card you just laid down to another card in the labyrinth. If you can do that, and picking up the card won’t get the card off by itself then you get the pair and points.

You can even get more than one match and pick up several cards at once, but I never managed that mythical beast, even though I saw both Batman and Superman pull that trick off.

Who is the Labyrinth card game good for?

This is all about spatial recognition and pattern matching. It’s simple enough you can play it with your pre-readers, and it’s a fun way to help kids work on early reading skills.

It’s also a quick game you can play with friends at a game day as you wait for others to finish up.

Despite pulling it out and thinking we might be getting rid of it, it went back into our small games box on the shelf (games that are small go into a giant basket)

 

Some more fun board games to play with your young kids

I’ve got a whole slew of these on my Games Pinterest board.

• Hey! That’s My Fish!
• Penguin Rescue
• Carcassone for Kids
• Preschool Games