The Amazing Moa Hunt product reviews

I won this game in a competition and was so excited about it. A wonderful kiwi general knowledge game that teaches as it entertains. So when it arrived I couldn't wait to drag the family together on games night to play it.

The concept of the game is a simple one. Shake the dice, move around the board, answer Qs along the way. Initial set up is a little fiddly to be perfectly honest. But the game play is easy and I really enjoyed it.

I do believe this game would be more suited for older family members or mature children. Definitely a game that could be used in a classroom, a fun way to teach children about the country they live in.

Although my younger children (even in the suggested age group) were really keen to play initially, the novelty wore off when they were unable to successfully answer all of the questions. But after playing the game a few more times, their memory for the answers improved and they really began to enjoy the game.

IQ ideas have produced a series of similar learning games as this and I would recommend them all.

I have a child that is absolutely mad about geography, be it local or international he loves it all, so when I got an opportunity to review this game I had to say yes.

To start off with it is well designed and the box art is great. The instructions are well written and easy to follow.

We decided to play the standard variation, this seemed like it was going to go rather quickly but you then realise that the further on you get the slower the game becomes as you franticaly try to land your piece on the required space, but it doesn't get any less interesting. Adding to the excitement of the game was the moa tokens. With each one being placed face down it was almost a case of luck of the draw as to whether you got 1 point or 2 for your correct answer.

After about an hours worth of playing we had finally grabbed all the tokens and successfully located each city, and it was time to tally up. By a small token of luck my son beat me by 3 points. Next game we'll do the trivia version, hopefully i'll have better luck with that one .

This product is the KIwi cousin of The Amazing Mammoth Hunt. Like it's "global" compatriot it comprises of two games.

Firstly there is the guess where the town is option as competitors pit their wits against each other to uncover the locations of famous and not so famous towns around the country all the way from Cape Reinga to Bluff. A rudimentary knowledge of NZ geography comes in handy, alternatively just think back to all those road trips that you had as a kid.

The second game is card based and involves guessing the name of a town based on a clue given. This to me was not quite as fun, as some of the clues were way too simple to guess, or alternatively the harder clues were asked on a second or third question rather than on the first question that had already given the answer away.

Overall the Amazing Moa Hunt was a great game and certainly one that we would like to add to our games cupboard particularly with our eldest about to start school. Playing it again I'd probably steer clear of the card based option and stick to the main board game which was a lot of fun, and to me more relevant than The Amazing Mammoth Hunt.

This was a lot of fun to play and surprisingly a little more challenging than a couple of us were expecting.

Guessing the location was a lot of fun and at times just plain hilarious (I swear none of us are mixing up Whakatane and Gisborne again!). Our best tactic was to aim to land on the "wings" or the places we knew first so that we could build up tokens quickly before having to embarrass ourselves at the lack of geography knowledge!

We also played the trivia option of the game. This was a lot easier and we gave up on the actual rules of taking turns guessing and were reduced to shrieking out the answers. One suggestion is that people possibly shouldn't be looking at the board when answering questions as some of the pictures make it a little too easy to guess the answers!

Also one other thing was that one of the moving tokens didn't hold together too well and the stand kept coming off so that is something to watch out for.

Overall though this was a great game and enjoyed by all. This would be a great one for families to help kids learn to geography and parents to brush up!