Gigamic Katamino Family Product Review

Reviewed by Mel S-W

Our family loves a board game night so I was delighted to receive Gigamic’s Katamino Family game through the post.  I adore the fact that it’s wooden and not made of plastic!

The game included 18 wooden playing blocks, a wooden board that has numbers and grooves down the side so that you can slot the wooden sliders in, this sets your game area, the “Penta.” There are a number of coloured cards which depict the blocks that you need to use to complete the game.  There are different colours for the different levels.  Starting with yellow and green for beginners, working your way up to the harder levels of blue, red and black.

Katamino Family is an amazing addition to our family’s game collection.  It also has multiple types of game play.  Not only can you battle against an opponent – in this case our 5 year old – or you can also play single player mode then play a set of puzzles which include balancing and 3D constructions.

In two player mode, you place the blocks to the side of the wooden board, insert the wooden sliders in-between numbers 3-4 to create the Penta for beginners and 4-5 for more intermediate (which gives you a bigger playing area for harder games).  You choose a card and then battle against your opponent to pick out your blocks and place them in the Penta.  The game gets really interesting when someone wins.  The player who loses chooses a larger block – a “Pentamino” – for the winning player.  The winner gets awarded 1 point for winning and then chooses a Pentamino of their choice for their opponent.  Each player moves the slider up a notch and you compete using the blocks that you have already been playing with, plus the new block.  The game expands as you go along.

Initially, when playing this with our son, we were able to keep it simple and we didn’t add in the additional Pentamino when the game was over.  He’s only 5 and where it was a new game we just wanted to ease him into it gently.  What’s great is it is an adaptable game.  Once we started following the game play rules he loved it!  It’s definitely a new family favourite.  I love this sort of brain teasing game.  It caused fall outs where I was able to complete a game quite quickly that my other half had been struggling with.

The 3d puzzles were a good and very different challenge.  Trying to balance the pieces to form different shapes required a whole new level of concentration and complete annoyance when someone knocked the table and it all came tumbling down!

Gigamic is a French company founded in the 1990’s who sell a range of wooden games.  Looking through those available I would definitely like to purchase another based on the quality and useability of this one.

Rating 5 out of 5 – this is such a great addition to our board game collection.  It costs a bit more than I would normally pay for a game but where it is made of wood and of good quality, it would be something I would buy.

RRP 34.95
Stockist: Available from amazon.co.uk and all good Hobby Stores

Rating: 5/5

Stockist hyperlink: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?