I received a complimentary The Game of Life board game to facilitate my review. The opinions in this post are 100% mine. You can read my full disclosure policy here.
When’s the last time you played The Game of Life? I haven’t played this game in years. Actually I’m not even sure if we had this one as a child but I must have played with my friends because I do remember it. Classic games are so much fun. I love being able to enjoy something from my childhood with my kids. We were excited to have the opportunity to review The Game of Life and had so much fun playing together!
What’s in the box?
Lots of stuff! The board and spinner that attach to it are included along with 4 car-shaped game pieces and pegs that fit inside of them representing the people in your ‘life’. There are career cards, house cards, and more, plus lots of paper money. And there are some cardboard tokens that get used when someone lands on a bonus spin and has a chance to earn some extra cash.
How do you play?
Each person starts at the same spot and immediate decides whether to go to college or just go right to work. Those college careers pay more, but you get paid sooner if you go right to work. And so begins a life of decisions! Do you want to have a baby? Do you want to go to night school? Do you want to make risky investments or take the safe road? Do you want to buy a house? There are pros and cons to every choice and he or she who retires with the most cash wins! Along the way there are lots of opportunities to earn more money and if you get in a jam you can take out a loan. Fortunately we all stayed above water when we played!
What did we think?
My kids and I had a blast playing this game together. It arrived for us to review on my birthday and the kids wanted to get it out immediately and play…so we did! The game says it’s for ages 8+, and I think that’s just about right. My son is nearly 5 and he’s probably too young to really understand all of it and definitely couldn’t play on his own. But with my help he actually did really well. So under 8 is not out of the question.
I love these classic board games. They’re fun, easy to set up, and no batteries. Three cheers for that! My daughter’s first move on the board was to go to college and then become a brain surgeon, earning a salary of $120K. My son became a lawyer, also earning $120K. This is the part where I cross my fingers and hope there’s some predictive power in this game. I myself was a teacher, earning a whopping $100K. Woohoo! I’ll take it!
We made our way around the board, getting married, having our ‘kids’ fall out of our cars, and flipping out about the cost of housing. There’s not much funnier than hearing your almost 5 year-old son yell, “FINE! I don’t want the beach house anyway! I’ll just take the barn!” The barn was an entire ranch, but we laughed at his outburst all night long. The cool thing about the game is that you’ll have a different ‘life’ every time you play. I think it was a good way to get the kids thinking about money and planning out your life. Granted, they’re still very young, but they seemed to get this idea of making choices with the money you have when they were offered the opportunity to go to night school but didn’t want to pay for it! We really enjoyed it and I know we’ll be playing often.
The Game of Life is available on Amazon and a great family game! Be sure to follow Hasbro Game Night on Facebook and on Twitter to be the first to hear about any new fun games and promotions!
Hasbro is generously offering one of my readers their own The Game of Life! This giveaway will end on February 7, 2014. You can enter to win [HERE] .
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