Game Review: "Apples to Apples Junior" card game

"Apples to Apples Junior" is a matching card game for four to ten players, with a couple of twists. For one thing, the players try to match adjectives like cuddly, lucky, and smelly with nouns like burned toast, Niagara Falls, and football. For another thing, each player gets a turn to be the judge of whether the other players' suggestions for matches actually fit. The players each submit one match per turn from a hand of five cards. The judge then awards the match to the player they deem made the bast case, and the role of judge moves around the circle to the left. The judge's decision is mostly subjective; if the players don't have much of a match they can put in a card that is just funny, and the judge can give it to them for making the table laugh. Play goes around the table until one player has been awarded four matches.

We found it funny and engaging, for both the adults and the kids. We have two boys, ages 7 and 11, with different reading and vocabulary skills, and they both got a kick out of making funny combinations like crunchy flashlight. They also were in it to win it, so to speak, and got a thrill from making a good match and being awarded the round. The first game we played was very close, with each player earning three matches before the final round, which made it very difficult for the final judge, since the last award was a guaranteed winner and the final judge had no way to win! Fortunately the last match was clearly the best one, and there was no grumbling from the losing players.

The younger son and I got up early the next morning and made up a two-player version, as well: put the stack of adjective cards in the middle, and each take half of the noun cards. Turn over one adjective card, and then alternate turning over noun cards until one player gets a clear match. We played for quite a while this way, and had some laughs when funny combinations came up.

The game is recommended for kids 9 and up; we found it easy enough for our 7 year old to play as long as the adults played too. I would imagine that even with older kids, it would be best to have at least one adult playing to make sure the matching went smoothly. The cards have supporting facts on the noun cards and similar words on the adjective cards, so if kids don't "get" a particular card, they have some hints to help them out.

All in all, a good game to add to your collection just for fun, and seems like a good vocabulary builder as well.