Orchard Toys Shape Aliens Review

Reviewed by Jo Hardy

Shape Aliens is a shape matching game.  It comprises of 20 alien cards, 20 shapes, 4 shape boards, 3 larger pieces that slot together to form the spaceship and 4 pieces that slot together to make the drivers cabin that goes in the middle of the space ship.  It is very easy to make up, but does need to be dismantled at the end of play to fit back into the box. The first time you play you will have to push out pieces to make the slots in the space ship.  I hadn’t noticed this so our first game had to be suspended for a minute while I did this.  Apart from that there is no other preparation needed to play the game.

In addition to the main Shape Alien game on the instruction leaflet there are a few suggestions for simple activities using just the shapes and alien cards to get younger children involved and familiar with the shapes.  Our three year old hasn’t yet got the hang of taking turns at games so at the moment these simpler activities suit her best.  She can do these herself or other family members can join in.  They are a fun way of learning to identify shapes and it’s not just the common shapes they include things like trapezium and parallelogram. Lucky for me the instructions included a shapes reference list naming each shape as there were a couple even I didn’t know.

The Shape Alien game is quite straight forward.  Each player takes 5 of the cut out shapes and places them face up in front of them.  The alien cards are spread out face down and the players take it in turn to turn over a card if you can match one of your chosen shapes to the alien card you pop the shape into the drivers cabin in the middle and slot the alien card into one of the slots on the spaceship.  If your alien card doesn’t match any of your shapes it is returned face down to the table, then the next person takes their turn.  The winner is the first person to match all of their shapes.

Orchard Toys who produce this game have a long history of providing good quality educational games and work with teachers to make sure their games help with learning and developing.  Another feature of this company that I really like is that they also have a missing part service.  I’m sure we’ve all suffered the annoyance of loosing an essential part of a game making the whole game useless.  This service is free for up to 3 pieces there is only a postage charge of £1.30 to pay. If you’ve lost the all important instructions these can also be found on the website.

Rating: 4/5

RRP: £11.75

This fun game is suitable for children aged 3 – 6, and available from orchardtoys.com priced at £11.75.
The orchard toys web site has a huge range of toys and jigsaws all at reasonable prices making them the ideal birthday gift.