Doodle Quest

Recently I was asked to review a game called "Doodle Quest." On a "ketchup" day with my 4th graders, the students who were all caught up with their work were able to try the game out for me. They loved it!

The board game is a game for 4 players. Each player gets a board, acetate type board, dry erase marker, and eraser. I think students were already excited because for some reason students love using dry erase markers.

Basically, there are playing cards with specific directions. The student to follow the directions most accurately wins. What I like about this game, too, is that the students playing in the game are the judges.

So for example, this card says "Draw a line to connect the mermaids to the matching dolphins without hitting the bubbles."

On the dry erase acetate board, students will draw using their best, educated guess, three lines that would essentially connect the mermaids to their matching dolphin just by looking at the card.

When everyone is finished, one by one, they pass the playing card around and place it underneath their acetate to tally up their points.  

The top left corner is a key to show you how to tally up your points. You can see that if the mermaid connects to the dolphin, you get 5 points; If you hit a bubble or don't connect to the dolphin, you get 0. This is where the other students become the judges, if something was a close call. For this board, the student would get 5 points, because only the blue mermaid is actually connected to the blue dolphin.

I forgot to mention, the game also comes with another acetate type board to keep score on. 

The student with the most points at the end wins! If you notice on the bottom right hand side, there is also a yellow fish. There is a yellow side, which is more simple... maybe appropriate for about first or second grade, and the reverse is the black side, a little more challenging, more appropriate for 4th or 5th grade. 

The kids really enjoyed the game and to be honest, the student who I thought would think they were "too cool" actually won! It's a great game for spatial reasoning and "thinking outside the box." Being a quiet game is also a bonus, especially if this is in my "I'm done" pile. I only wish you could have more than 4 players, which I'm sure you could, they just wouldn't have the same matching materials, and I wonder if sooner or later the students will get bored of the cards that come with the game. Buying additional cards would be a great feature for the future. For now though, the kids ask to play all the time!