Gigamic
1-6 player
20 minutes
Peek-A-Mouse published by Gigamic Games is a 2020 release designed by Elodie Clément and Théo Rivière with artwork by Jonathan Aucomte.
Peek-a-Mouse is a seeking game designed for 1-6 players aged 5 to 9. It has a range of difficulty levels to suit gamer kids as well as the non-gamer ones, and is a co-operative experience that plays in 20 minutes.
Essentially, players have 30 seconds of light to peek through the windows of the house and spot the tokens and remember what location they are in for the question part of the round.
Does anyone remember that party memory game that was often played at kids’ parties? The one where there were random items on a tray, and you had a minute to remember them all and then some were removed, with everyone trying to remember which ones were missing?
I used to love that game Trying to desperately force my brain to remember a load of small items which had no relationship to each other was a real brain workout. I do believe though that this and the pairs memory game are the reason I have an elephant-like memory as an adult. It is incredibly rare that I forget something with the precise exception of the murderer in a whodunnit. Which means I can usually re-watch those shows again and again and get almost the same enjoyment. Bonus!
When I first got sent this game to review, I looked at the back of the box and was confused about how this game worked. The game happens inside the box, with the lid on. Which sounded crackers. I have never seen it before, and it is a bit of an off-the-wall concept. You also have a flashlight that comes with the game which goes in the top to illuminate the room.
[Note: For all parents out there; the torch came with batteries in and is ready to rock! There was no scrabbling about for screwdrivers and weird shaped watch batteries; just pull out the plastic protector and you’re golden].
The tokens that show the items are all double sided with different but related things on each side. For example, a lollipop on one side and a sweet on the other, or a golden old fashioned key on one side and a silver modern key on the other. When you post them through the hole in the top of the Mouse’s house, they will drop onto a random side. Then before switching the light on, you need to give the house a vigorous shake to spread the tokens out randomly.
Once you click on that torchlight, you have 30 seconds to frantically find all the tokens by looking through the windows of the Mouse’s house. Believe me, you will all be leaning over the table yelling about green buttons in the kitchen and ruby rings in the bathroom!
The first round we found easy, but by the second and third round, there was now information about the location of things already in there. I found my mind playing tricks on me. Was the key actually in the bathroom this time, or was that in the last round? My mind was getting dizzy from the laps I was doing round the Mouse’s house. And the kids I have played it with have absolutely loved it! It is a total crowd pleaser. Well, quite; who doesn’t want to run about the table trying to remember what it is in the Mouse-house?
The game comes with a few different question mats. Before each round, the question mats are set up using random items placed face down. Placing these items face up would probably help younger brothers and sisters get involved too.
The questions are things like “which room was the key in?”, or “were the ring and the sweetie in the same room?”. The random generation of these questions and the token location gives in my mind pretty much endless replayability to this game.
I like that the rooms are different colours. This makes the memory part a little easier. Sometimes you simply cannot remember the word for what you are trying to say in time, however. The kitchen also has a 3D table which casts shadows, making spotting tokens in that room a lot more difficult than in some of the other rooms. I would have preferred this to be plastic rather than cardboard as a bit more pressure than I wanted to apply was needed to push it into place. The other house components work excellently, and with the little plastic reinforcements, the cardboard dividers offer enough stability. My only other bug bear is with the sleeve that comes with the game. It is necessary as there are window holes in the sides of the box but it is too tight, and it will rip in your first few attempts at putting it back on. Meaning that you’ll just chuck it to the side like me and go off hunting for a replacement!
As I said at the top of this review, this game is unlike any other board game I have played. I stand by that. It is like a co-operative, tabletop, hide and seek and it is brilliant. Peering through windows into houses in real life is obviously not the done thing. But here the mechanism just sings. If you are someone who has kids at home that would enjoy this cooperative experience with you, be sure to give this a look when it is released in the UK next month!
SaggyScore: 82/100
Likes
● Seeking good fun
● Really original experience and fun concept
● The pressure of 30 sec gets the adrenaline pumping
● Varying levels of difficulty to suit a wide age range
Dislikes
● Cardboard table isn’t built to last, along with the sleeve which is too tight for purpose.
● It says age 5 to 9 years, but as an adult I thought it was great fun!
