The last thing to highlight is that Animal Upon Animal components are awesome and the very definition of kid friendly (did you see the smiles on the animals). In the third game, they work cooperatively to race against the crab, training their dexterity skills with play.

The players roll the die to see which of their animals they have to place on top of the others next. This tends to be true for stacking games in general, but it’s nice to see that it’s still bearing out. This engaging game includes 13 wooden animals and is great for developing fine motor skills and introducing turn-taking. Sure, in the past I’ve found some games that I’ve convinced them to play but I lose more than I win with that battle.All of that said, a bit less randomness might make it more my speed (I’d love, for instance, rolling to determine how you place the animal, rather than how many animals or which animal you place), but also, not every game is designed for me personally, so, whatever.

I think this would be a great first game for toddlers, and they might surprise you by coming back to it even once they’ve graduated to “big kid” games like Elliot has. On your turn, you roll a die to determine which action you must take: will it be adding one or more animals to the pyramid in the middle, or will you get lucky and be able to offload one of your pieces onto someone else or place it on the table to extend the base? If there are fewer than four players, randomly distribute the remaining ones so that everyone gets roughly an equal amount.Animal Upon Animal is a game geared toward young children and thus has a play time equal to that of a preschooler’s attention span, short. Most parents will have a better sense of balance when placing animals on top of a growing animal stack. The only issue that my kids had with the components is that the animal tokens only have detail on one side. I think this was an ideal rule mechanic for Animal Upon Animal because otherwise one collapse would knock a player out of the game and that makes the game less competitive and less fun for all players.

Often, being able to place two animals is a pretty significant boon, so it’s kind of frustrating when it’s randomly determined. Anyways, one title they passed to me was Animal upon Animal: Crest Climbers, a variant of the classic, so let’s dive into that and see what’s going on. What might surprise you is that it’s not just a dexterity stacking game but also a strategic placement game as well. If you do have questions the rules are three pages that you can easily reference and find an answer quickly.For example, my 5 and 8-year old taught their grandparents to play under 5 minutes and were able to answer their questions throughout as they played. Game is designed for 2-4 players and contains: 29 wooden animals, 1 die with symbols and game instructions.