Game Like a Mother

Quick Take: Cooperative game without any scary elements. Build a complete ant colony before ant eaters block too many of the entrances. It's basically Race to the Treasure but with an ant theme instead of ogres. My 6 year old daughter is not all at interested in Race to the Treasure but loves Ant Colony, it's interesting how much a different theme can make all the difference in one of these games. The premise is simple but it's a little more difficult to win this game than Race to the Treasure. That said, we generally win whenever we play. But it's not worth owning both games, they're too similar.

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How to Play: Your goal is to create a complete ant colony with two entrances unblocked by anteaters and with all four rooms included among the paths. The paths must all connect beneath the ground, you cannot have two separate paths that never intersect with each other. During the course of the game you will take turns drawing tiles and creating your path. If an anteater is drawn, you roll the die and place the anteater on whatever letter is rolled. There is one tile that is an anteater spray. You can hold onto that and then if an anteater is drawn you can use the spray tile to get rid of the anteater. Both tiles are discarded from play at this point. The other key element are road blocks like big bugs or rocks. These must be placed at the ends of paths whenever they are drawn. Once you have drawn all four room tiles and placed them within your colony you win.

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Variations:  The first few tiles of the game really set you up for success or failure. There's a rule in the game that if you draw a room tile before you have three tiles played you put it back in the pile and I might extend that rule to the obstacle tiles as well. 

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Similar Games To Check Out: Race to the Treasure, Hoot Owl Hoot, Dinosaur Escape, Stone Soup, Sky Magic