Rubik’s Race Review

Reviewed by Sandip

Rubik’s cube. Everyone has heard of them, everyone has had a go with one, from the young to the old. They were all the rage back in the 1980s but they are still popular now in the 2020s. They even made giant ones with more coloured squares per side than I can count. You don’t need to look too far to buy one, well one of the regular and more practical sized ones. Well now the Rubik’s makers are not just involved in the cube, they have a multitude of toys and games under their belt. And I was lucky enough to be chosen to receive and review one of them which is their game Rubik’s Race. 

This is a 2 player game for ages 5+. We are a family of 4 of which the youngest are kids who are aged 6 and 9 years old. But I have to admit, we all enjoyed playing Rubik’s Race, even us adults. 

This is made on the basis of the original cube where you are essentially solving one side of a Rubik’s cube fast than another player. It is also a bit reminiscent of a puzzle that I had as a kids where you have to slide jumbled up tiles on a board to make a clear picture.  

The game set up is 3 black pieces of plastic that snap together to make 2 boards on which the sliding tiles are placed in a 5 by 5 square minus 1 so that you have a gap to enable to sliding action and a piece that stands upright to separate the 2 boards, but the upright piece has a whole in the middle that is the size of a 3 by 3 square. 

The tile boards are filled with small plastic tiles of 4 squares of each colour from red, blue, green, white, orange and yellow. The kit also has a small, clear topped shaker cube that has 9 tiny cubes each with a coloured face on it. This shaker cube is then given a good shake and the little cubes settle to reveal a 3 by 3 picture. If for any reason there are more than 4 cubes displaying the same colour, you need to shake the cube again to show another pattern. The cube is then put down and the aim of the game is for the players to try and slide their titles in order to recreate the shaker cube pattern in the middle of their gaming board. The first player to be done shuts the divider onto their gaming cube to show their match in the window. It your match is correct you’ve won the game, so obviously you want to do this as quick as you can. In our house we play the first to get to 3 winds is the overall winner. 

It’s a very simple game design but one that any age can play and enjoy. My kids had a great time playing it. There are a few other suggested games in the accompanying leaflet but we have only played the normal straightforward version and enjoyed that. The downside of this game was the lack of portability. It’s a shame the plastics bits that clip together don’t fold into each other to keep all the individual squares together so that you can take this game away on staycation trips for a rainy day. The cardboard box it comes in is quite big for the size of the game and a little flimsy to use as storage so I think I may need to by a separate bag to store everything is as I would hate to loose even a single tile as that would render the game useless. That said, we all enjoyed the game and would recommend it to any family with young primary aged kids. 

Rating: 3/5 

RRP: £20 

Can be purchased from Amazon here.