SNAP Review – Dodo

Anitra, you’ve heard of the Dodo bird, right?

Yes?

So, the dodo is an extinct flightless bird. It was endemic to the island of Mauritius, which is actually east of Madagascar…

Andrew, Andrew, we talk about board games here, not animal facts.

All right, fair. This is a SNAP review for Dodo.

Game

Dodo is a speedy cooperative memory game, designed by Frank Bebenroth and Marco Teubner. It’s intended for kids ages 6 and up to play in about 10 minutes, and it’s published by KOSMOS in the US.

Art

Let’s talk about the art in this game. It’s clear this is a toy for kids. The whole game looks like a toy. The focus of the game is this tall mountain, with the cardboard dodo bird sitting at the top. There’s also this groove here for this weird ball, which we’re going to talk about in a little bit – That’s the dodo egg.

And, there’s a cardboard boat that will hopefully catch the ball at the end of the game.

The art on the other pieces – the bridge boards and the tokens – is also very friendly and keeps the tropical island theme going.

Mechanics

All right Anitra, so that’s the art. What do we do with all these pieces? How do you play the game?

First you need to set up the mountain. The very first time you do it, you’ll be punching out a whole bunch of grooves and holes to hang these ledge supports. After that, you’ll need to put the supports in. And that part you’ll have to do every time you play.

Once you’ve got the ledge supports on each wall, stand them up into the corner supports, making sure to match the colors on the corners. Finally, put the cap on, set the dodo in the cap, and you’re good to go.

It’s a little annoying to have to do this every time, and I’m a little worried about this chip board / cardboard sliding in the plastic holders, but it works.

Set all the bridges, brown side up, in order, with number one on the top.

And now, this might be the most important part of setup, take the dodo egg, warm it up in your hands before putting it in the nest.

But how do you PLAY?

Dodo is pretty simple. Tilt the dodo bird forward to release the egg. Now, roll the die, then flip a tile over. If the tile matches the die, great! Put the tile on the next circle of the bridge piece on the top of the stack of bridge pieces.

If you fill the next bridge piece, put it on the next section of the mountain.

Some of the tiles are wilds. They have pictures of the natives of the island and they match with anything on the die.

Now, pass the die to the next player. See if you can work together as a team to build the bridges all the way down to safely guide the dodo egg to the boat. If it falls off before you finish a bridge section, you all lose!

Expectations

And, that’s it! This is a pretty simple game, what did we expect from it?

Let’s start with the egg. I saw this game at the GAMA Expo this year, and watching the egg roll super slowly down the mountain was mind boggling. I expected everyone else encountering it to have the same shocked reaction I did.

But beyond that, I expected this to be a simple game that kids would really like. And it would be fun at least a few times before it ran its course.

You talked so much about how cool this egg was, I was really eager to see it. But it mostly sounded like a gimmicky game for kids.

Surprises

But I was surprised. Even though the slow-rolling egg is a gimmick – it works really well as an unpredictable timer. Once it starts rolling down the hill, the pressure is on to find matches and get those bridges built!

I was honestly really surprised at how well Dodo works even for adults. The skull icons on the bridges are optional extra spots to make the game more difficult, and you can even ramp up the difficulty more by removing some of the wild tokens.

Even though this is absolutely a game for kids, it’s hilarious to get out with some fun-loving adult friends and try to “beat the clock” on the dodo egg, at least a couple times.

The game looks really great on the table and it’s pretty sturdy. I am actually really impressed with all the care the KOSMOS team put into graphic design, which makes putting this thing together a lot easier. It all fits and it makes sense.

Recommended?

Anitra, with that being said, do we recommend Dodo?

We definitely recommend this for kids, especially kids from 5-10 years old. They’ll love using their memory to find the matches and race to build the ramp for the egg.

Since you can change the difficulty by changing the number of tokens you need, this should have more longevity than your typical kids’ memory game.

For preteens and adults, this is a fun game to play once or twice – and this ball thing is really mind-boggling, like I said. But honestly, there’s just not a lot more to the game.

We rate Dodo 4 eggs out of 5.

And that’s Dodo, in a SNAP!

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Dodo from KOSMOS for this review.

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SNAP review music is Avalanche, provided courtesy of You Bred Raptors?