Takeout: The Card Game is a social card game suitable for 2-4 players and with a suggested age of 10 years plus although my 9yr old loves playing it. From Small Monsters Games, it is fast paced card game as you try to beat the other players to get an entire Chinese meal for yourself.
The scene is set for the game:
In Takeout, players are a group of young backpackers in a tiny noodle shop down an alley in China. Although none of you speak Chinese, you’re determined to sample authentic Chinese cuisine. The object of the game is to get one dish of each flavor (sweet, sour, salty, spicy and bitter) and a cold drink into your meal, before any of your friends do.
In the Takeout card box are a variety of cards, food cards and action cards which start together in a kitchen pile but are discarded into either a food pile that other players can select the top one from or a general discard pile.
There are also cards which show the complete range of flavours you need to collect in our meal and each player can have one of these cards in front of them to remind them of what they need to collect.
It’s then time for the game play to start. The instructions are fairly simple although it’s good to have a first round of play where you are not competitive and just getting to grips with rules. After that everyone was at battle to get their meal prepared first!
The Takeout game starts by dealing out 5 cards per player, and then each player takes a turn that consists of drawing a card, playing a card and discarding a card. If you get a food card you have the option of keeping it, playing it of discarding and this is were you get tactical. Sometimes it’s worth playing a duplicate food card to conceal the fact you have another one to complete your meal. But also you have to remember the action cards come into play and you get the option of helping yourself to one of your friends dishes, sending one of the other players dishes to the bottom of the kitchen pile, swap a meal with a friend or pick a random meal you fancy from one of your friends!
We’ve really enjoyed playing this game as a family with my 9 and 11 year old children. It is fun, they are always eager to be the first to complete their meal first and they love the action cards when they can either steal off of others or put a part of someone’s meal back in the kitchen. It’s a game of both chance with getting the meals you need and tactical playing to complete the entire meal. With Takeout being a card game it means it’s great for carrying around with you for play anywhere, great for travelling, holidays etc as well as simply playing at home. A fun game that we’d recommend!
All reviews are my own and my family’s opinions. We are not paid for reviews although we do receive the product to try out and enable us to write the review.
The game comprises of the following parts:
The idea of the came is to collect all of the bells in one colour. The colour you collect is determined by the first colour you pick up that no one else is already collecting. The magnetic wand is used to pick up the bells and has a bigger stronger magnet at one end and a less powerful one on the smaller end. It’s up to you which end you choose but we found the big end really strong so tended to play with the smaller side.
My children loved this game, the jingle of the bells kept them excited and the thrill of what they could collect on the magnet. It is tricky, not as easy as it looks at all, but we did have our own rules to simplify it a little. For such a simple game, it has been played many times over the last few weeks and it’s always lovely to see both concentration and smiles on their faces. I also love the travel pouch, a round neoprene zip up case that holds all of the bells and magnetic wand so the game is completely self contained. 
A fun family game that everyone can enjoy and is great to take on holidays, weekends away for a bit of healthy competition and fun!
The game is enclosed within a giant plastic ball and consists of a maze which goes every way imaginable. There is a small silver ball which you have to get from one end to the other. The maze is marked with numbers along the way which you have to follow and it guides you through. There are three starting points, so if you keep getting stuck at a certain point, you don’t have to go right back to the beginning, you can step in at the second or third starting points.
To get through involves a lot of twisting and turning to balance the ball along it’s path and just a slight wobble can make the ball fall off of it’s track. The game is aimed at all ages and both my 8yr old daughter as well as us adults have all spent much time playing with this. It’s one of those things where you are determined to get further than the last person and the challenge keeps you motivated to keep trying and trying again until you succeed.
The tiles come in a simple zip up banana shaped bag. This is really useful and keeps all the pieces together for storage. It also opens nice and widely so that it’s easy for little fingers to help tidy away at the end of play.
The Bananagrams set comprises of 80 high quality single tiles and 13 combination tiles. There are brightly coloured and differently coloured to help younger children recognise their letters. Therefore letters such as p’s, b’s and d’s will always be different colours. The letters are all small letters which are what preschool children learn to recognise first and the tiles also have a small line at the bottom to identify which way up the tile should go. Vowels are also easily seen by being coloured yellow.
Both my children aged 5 and 8 were eager to have a play and we started with some simple letter recognition ideas that we found on the instruction sheet such as finding the letters in your name, finding each letter of the alphabet and making small little rhyming words such as cat and mat. We then had a go at the main game, although gave Mister B some assistance being the youngest. He was really good at finding words, he just needed a little help to link them together.
The game is a race to use up all your letters and you can have unlimited swaps from the centre. It is fast paced and fun and get’s everyone excited and competitive during play. Of course you can slow things down for younger players and even help them to maintain their motivation to play with letters.