Piles Card Game Review
DISCLOSURE -THIS ITEM WAS GIFTED TO THE REVIEWER FOR THE PURPOSES OF WRITING THE REVIEW. ALL THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS ARE THE REVIEWER’S OWN.
Reviewed by Melanie
I’m always happy to be asked to review a new game as it’s a great excuse to sit down with my family and have fun together. As my children are getting older, now 13 and 10, it’s getting increasingly difficult to get them to do things with us, but games always seem to work and get everyone engaged.
Piles is a card-based matching game from Lost Boy Entertainment, an American based film production company and board game retailer. On their website they say that they are a family company with the goal of providing entertainment to the world. Their games appear to be available from a variety of retailers. Piles is billed as “a fast-paced free for all” game.
The Piles game arrived quickly, delivered by courier. I was impressed with the fun and colourful box which is very appealing. The box is compact and sturdy, with a magnetic lid. Inside the box are 200 game cards and a rulebook. Each of the cards feature colourful pictures of items of clothing and accessories in sets of four different coloured variations of the same item (50 sets in total). There is also a handy guide in the top of the box lid showing how many sets of cards are needed for different number of players. This is a great idea and saves going through the rulebook to check when setting up to play each time.
Piles is aimed at players aged 8 years and above and can be played by up to 8 players. The average game time is 10 minutes. The rule book was colourful and easy to read, I was initially slightly confused about how to play but as is often the case, once we started playing it all became clear.
The aim of Piles is for players to be the quickest to collect six sets (piles) of matching items. At the start of the game the correct number of pairs of cards (as shown in the table in the rule book) are shuffled. Players are then dealt six piles of four cards face down, the remaining four cards are placed face down in the centre. As soon as the four cards in the centre are turned over the game starts. Players have to swap cards picking up and placing down cards from the centre to make matching sets of four items (i.e. four jumpers – there are more than one design of jumper, so they must all be the same type). Each time a player gets a set (pile) of four cards these are placed face up in front of them. The game continues until one player manages to get six full matching sets and places them all face up. They then shout “piles” to declare victory.
It all sounded simple, but as I soon found, when playing one on one with my 10-year-old, it’s actually quite confusing trying to remember what cards you have in each pile and then swapping them with cards in the middle and hoping you end up with four the same. The Piles information did mention the frenetic pace of the game, and I think that’s where I was failing as, whilst my 10-year-old worked at lightning pace remembering which cards he needed and getting piles one after the other, I struggled to keep up and was getting confused. He beat me hands down the first few times. I then changed opponents and found that playing with my partner was much easier as we both worked at a similar pace. I think we may have been cheating a bit as we were telling each other what pairs we were trying to collect and helpfully putting them in the middle. If we hadn’t done this, you could quite easily both be trying to collect the same set and both end up with two matching cards for quite a period of time, which I guess is part of the game! We then played the game as a family and all agreed that it was more fun and actually easier with more players as there was less chance of us all trying to collect the same sets. The average game time does seem to be about 10 minutes, so Piles is a great game to keep handy to play when you have a spare moment.
The Piles information says that it’s “easy to learn and hard to master” and I think this is spot on. The game is simple to play but you really need to have your brain switched on to work quickly and collect the sets faster than the other players (I have yet to win a game in our family).
I would highly recommend Piles for a fun family game, it’s easy to play and compact so it will be ideal to take with us on holiday. It’s definitely going on my packing list!
Rating: 5/5
RRP: £19.99
Available to buy from Amazon here