Happy Puzzle Company – The Genius Star Review

Reviewed by Melody

I was delighted to be asked to review The Genius Star as a potential gift for Father’s Day. The Genius Star is one of a range of games from The Happy Puzzle Company’s “Genius Collection” These are billed as being possibly the cleverest games ever invented and are designed for the whole family to enjoy playing either together or individually.

The Happy Puzzle Company is a small company who specialise in selling games, puzzles, challenges and puzzle books, they have over 300 to choose from and many have won awards. Their ethos is to promote family play and to develop thinking skills.

We already own another Happy Puzzle Company game – the Genius Square which is the original game from the Genius Collection. The Genius Star works on the same principle but is given a higher genius rating (4 out of 5 lightbulbs) so is more of a challenge. The Genius Star is suitable for ages 8 years + and is for 1-2 players.

As a family we enjoy playing games together, and are always on the lookout for new games. With Father’s Day approaching, I’ll be searching for gifts that are a little bit different to the usual beer, slippers and chocolate and I think the Genius Star could just fit the bill.

I was impressed with the communication from the Happy Puzzle Company. I had an email to tell me that the game had been dispatched, and then another, a couple of days, later confirming the time that the courier would deliver it.

When the package arrived, I was surprised at how small the box was (it measures 19cm x 19cm). It turns out that this was because packaging had been kept to a minimum and there was no unnecessary plastic. The game fitted the box pretty much perfectly. This is positive as it means it doesn’t take up too much room in our (already overflowing) games cupboard. The downside of this however is that it’s very difficult to keep the pieces together neatly in the box when not in use. The box itself was brightly coloured and very visually appealing.

Inside the box were two plastic star shaped grids, two sets of 11 multi-coloured wooden shapes, two sets of seven blocker pieces (triangles) and a small resealable plastic bag containing seven dice (a mixture of six and eight sided). There was also an instruction booklet, which had instructions in many languages. I was impressed by the quality of the pieces which felt very sturdy and were brightly coloured.

The aim of the game is to fill the Star by placing all of the coloured pieces into the empty spaces, fitting them around the wooden blocker pieces. The positions of the blocker pieces are determined by throwing the dice, and placing them in the corresponding spaces on the grid. A bit like Tetris, but star shaped! You can play either alone or by racing against an opponent to be the first to complete the star.

We had a lot of fun playing the Genius Star, both of my children (aged 8 and 11) were fully engaged with the game and we found ourselves becoming quite competitive to see who could complete each puzzle the fastest (and be declared a genius!).

I also liked the fact that the Genius Star supports STEM learning, players use several skills including thinking at speed, spatial awareness and visual perception to complete the puzzle. On the whole the game was very quick, taking a couple of minutes each round, but sometimes t was more difficult to complete and took longer to solve. The box says that there are 165,888 possible puzzles and that there is always at least one solution (apparently this has been checked by a computer programme) so this is a game that will never get boring. As an added twist, for those wanting a bigger challenge, there is the option to play using the “golden star” pieces. This involves placing the two blue pieces together in the puzzle to make a hexagon that completes a golden star as part of the solution. We haven’t tried that option yet, but apparently only 57.4% of the puzzles actually have a solution that will include this.

The only downside for us was that only two of us could play at a time it would be great if there was a bigger set on sale that included four sets of playing pieces!

Overall this is a brilliant game, I would highly recommend it. It’s compact, good quality and great fun. I’m sure any Father would like to receive this as a gift.

Rating: 5/5

RRP: £19.99

This product can be purchased from The Happy Puzzle Company here