Treasure Chest product reviews

I love any games that involve tactics and planning strategic moves so figured this would be right up my ally. It is a pretty simple game to get the hang of so even younger players wouldn't have any issues mastering this game. The only real downside I found to this game was that it didn't take us long to figure out a couple of sure fire tactics to consistently win the game which very quickly made us lose interest.

All the same, while this may not be high on my list of "must own" games, this would still be a good one to add to the family stash to encourage tactical thinking and strategy in the younger family members.

At our recent "planning meeting" in December, I plonked this on the table and put the challenge out to help me playtest it. I had a couple of volunteers, and we ended up playing a bit of a round-robin for half an hour.

I had to admit, the game seems so simple... there's one little quirk you have to keep in mind to avoid making an embarrassing faux pas - and that is that when you move a piece it must travel to the fullest extent of that direction. No stopping out in the middle of empty space... EXCEPT when that stopping point would leave it on the Treasure Chest. Only the coloured gems are allowed to stop there - and that's the winning move after all.

Now, I don't claim to be any great master tactician - as proven by my repeated and ignoble defeats at the hands of my opponents - but even so it took me all of 10 minutes to see 2 winning strategies - one that works if you are the player who starts, and the other as the player who follows. Once you have mastered those two strategies, winning against anyone who doesn't know them is a dead certainty. If they ARE aware of them, then you get a bit of a challenge when the game becomes more of a sliding-puzzle style game, to see who can position the blindside just right.

Overall, this is a game better suited for younger minds, who are flexible and inventive without being experienced and brutal. For the adult wanting to instil some self-confidence into a younger player, this would be a good avenue to explore too, as it's quite easy to get 'sidetracked' and leave an opening for the younger player to leap into and win, without being too obvious about it. Though I can't find a confirmed price online at the moment (since this is quite a new game) I think it's around the $20 range, which makes it fairly affordable to try.