Game Like a Mother

Quick Take: This is probably my favorite game to play one on one with my oldest son. I don't think it's particularly popular and I'm not sure why. It's set up like memory but no memory skills are involved, you are just trying to collect as many fossils as possible and there is some fun strategy around the order in which you collect fossil pieces and the variety of action tiles (large question marks) and how they can impact game play. We recently played this with all three kids and there was remarkably little fighting because they all cared about collecting one or two complete fossils and they weren't too concerned about the actual points at the end for who officially won the game. 

How to Play: There are different set ups depending on how many players you play with but my son and I generally prefer to play with all the tiles. The first player gets to remove the Beginning of Excavation Tile. From there, the next player can take any tile that is exposed from that spot. No diagonals where you can only see the corner, at least one full side of a tile must be exposed in order to select it. You can choose to draw a fossil or an action tile which could be a number of wonderful things like steal a fossil piece from an opponent, exchange a fossil piece, draw two more fossil pieces on the same turn, get an item out of the garbage pile ... or it could be to discard an item into the garbage pile. Or a rock. When all the fossil cards have been taken by the players the game is over and you count up points. There are bonuses for more complete fossils. The most points wins!

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Variations: Shorter games are easy to manage by putting fewer tiles out to play with. And if you or your child has preferences when it comes to action tiles it's easy to weed out the ones you want or don't want and to pick which you put into the game. 

Similar Games To Check Out:  Outfoxed!, Latice, Rat-A-Tat Cat, Labyrinth, Sushi Go!

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