Dodo is a cooperative matching children’s game featuring a 3D mountain with a dodo egg. The dodo bird has laid an egg on top of the mountain peak, and all of a sudden it’s slowly falling down. If it falls off the cliff it will surely crack, so it’s up to you and your team to bring the egg down safely. You do this by rolling a die and matching it to materials you need to build bridges to help it down. If you help it down to the boat, you and your team win the game. This is a very impressive children’s game that even I really enjoyed. Dodo is published by Kosmos. The game is for 2-4 players and is recommended for kids ages 6 and up.
What’s in the Box?
- 3 Boards and plastic connections to form a mountains
- 1 Plastic top of mountain with divet to hold the egg
- 1 Base board
- 14 Plastic bridge holders
- 1 Egg
- 1 Cardboard Dodo
- 1 Cardboard Boat
- 1 Cliff board
- 6 Bridge boards
- 1 Die
- 57 Tokens
How’s it Play?
This is an intense cooperative matching game with a unique timing system. There are 6 different cardboard bridge sections that each require tokens. Players take turns rolling a die and then choosing one of the face down tokens to flip over. If it matches the die result, you can add that token to the top cliff edge. If it does not match, you flip the token back over. Quickly, you need to hand the die off to the next player for them to roll the die and find a match.
If you flip over a Hagulaminapitopasi, which is one of the people on this island, its an automatic match, as these tokens are wild. After players fill in all the storage spaces on bridge section, this bridge is added to the cliff. If you play the expert variant, you need to fill in the additional spaces on the board (marked with a skull) to place the bridge section onto the cliff.
You need to make matches quickly because at the very beginning of the game you move the dodo cardboard cutout that is stopping the egg from rolling. Moving it causes the egg to slowly move off onto the cliff edge, and it continues to move down the bridge sections you are racing to place on the cliff. The egg is the timer for the game. If it fails off before making it to the boat, you all lose the game. If you are able to quickly place all 6 bridge sections onto the cliff, and then place enough tokens to bring the boat in, you win the game and the egg will continue down the cliff safely, landing in the boat.
If players can make enough matches to add all the bridges onto the cliff and the boat before the egg drops, all players win together. If players are too slow by not adding a bridge in time, and the egg drops off the cliff, all players lose.
The Verdict
The most exciting thing about the game is the egg rolling from one ledge to another. It’s almost a magic trick that the egg slowly moves, hugging all corners and never falling over a ledge if it’s placed correctly. The trick is that the egg has a ball inside that causes it to wobble, but it does so very slowly. The egg being the timer for the game is its gimmick, that is the star of the game.
And the egg definitely does make this game fun. Matching is used for little kids in many different ways. We have played a couple of different games that add some new and cool things to the matching mechanic. But Dodo really makes matching both fun and intense, as kids are so stunned and fixed on watching the egg roll, many times they forget how important it is to roll the die and try to get a match.
I have played many games for very young players, this one is recommended for players aged 6 and older. And for me, this has been one of the best games suited for very young kids that I also enjoyed.
My kids liked the game so much we played with the expert variant, and we have gotten so good at it that we have been adding our own rules to make things harder. We have taken out the wild tokens, we have made rules as to who needs to place the bridge pieces, and then we ultimately ended with continuing to play the game after we got the boat placed to see how many extra tokens we can store in the boat before the egg lands in it.
Anyways, for a kids game, this would be at the top of my list for recommendation. If you are not playing games with young ones, then this game is probably not what you are looking for, unless you are very much interested in gravity and how an egg like the one included in this game can do its magical rolling without having problems.
You can grab Dodo from Thames & Kosmos, Amazon, or your FLGS at an MSRP of $34.95.
Images via Kosmos
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