Board games review - Who Shook Hook, Dazzling Princess game and Dobble

We are big Disney fans in this house, so I was very excited to have the opportunity to try out a couple of new Disney licensed board games which are aimed at young children. We were sent a copy of Who Shook Hook? - a game for young children based around Jake and the Neverland Pirates, and the Dazzling Princess Game - a game themed around the Disney Princesses. We were also sent a copy of Dobble, which is a card game aimed at slightly older children and adults.

Who Shook Hook?

Who Shook Hook? is a game of skill. Aimed at children aged four and older, players travel around a simple board and depending on where you land you must use different tools to remove treasure from a hammock, without waking Captain Hook who is sleeping there.

The rules are very easy for young children to follow. The number of spaces that you can move is determined by a spinner, and it is clear where you land what you need to do. Captain Hook is very stable in his hammock so I think that it would be difficult to knock him out completely, but it can be quite tricky to remove some of the pieces of treasure. Fortunately my son loved playing the game and wasn't bothered when he dropped his treasure, although it might frustrate some younger children if they aren't able to manage it.

We really enjoyed playing this game, my son caught on to the rules immediately and it's a great game to play with just two players or up to four. It also doesn't take too long to play so is excellent for short attention spans. My daughter, 2, was too young to actually play the game, but even she enjoyed playing with the character pieces and the bits of treasure.

I've made a little video review showing the set up of the game and the game play in action, which you can see below:

Dazzling Princess Game

In the Dazzling Princess Game, each player is given an empty tiara, bracelet and ring. Players take it in turns to choose a small card from a box, which has a picture related to one of the Disney Princesses. There is a picture guide to the Princesses to help you if you need it. Once the player has guessed which Princess is represented by the image, they can use a Big Heart Jewel to reveal the answer. If they were correct then they win gems which can be stuck into their items of jewellery. The first player to fill all the jewel spaces on their jewellery is the winner.

There are also some Secret Princess cards. If you pull one of these then you need to find out who the secret Princess is, then pretend to be this Princess so that the others can guess who you are. If another player is able to guess then you both win gems.

This game does require a certain amount of knowledge about the Disney Princesses, which is great for the little ones as they have an excellent chance against the adults that might not have the same amount of detailed knowledge! Although it is perhaps aimed at girls, my son is pretty familiar with his Disney Princesses, and he very much enjoyed playing the game. He was particularly fascinated with the magic jewel that reveals the answers, and sat for ages going through the cards to see what was written on the back.

Dobble

We were also sent a copy of the card game Dobble (affiliate link). Dobble is aimed at slightly older players - the box suggests age six and over - although it would also be enjoyed by adults. Dobble consists of a set of 55 cards which can be used to play five different games. On each card there are eight symbols, taken from a bank of over 50 symbols. But whichever two cards you select, there will always be one, and only one, symbol which is the same on both. This has been fascinating me, I'm not a statistician and I can't work out how it's done!

The most simple game involves drawing two cards, and being the first player to call out the matching symbols. All the mini games are based around this premise, with the winner being the one that is first to match the symbols.

We've tried out a couple of the mini-games and they have been great fun. I've been playing it with Harry, and you can really see the cogs in his little head going around as he tries to find the matching symbols. Sometimes you think you've beaten the system and there is no match - but of course there always is!

Because it's such a compact game, and it is all contained neatly in a nice little tin, this would be a really good game to take away on holiday with you, it's small and yet there is plenty there to keep you entertained for ages.

We received copies of these games to review, Amazon links are affiliate links.