SNAP Review – Peek-a-Mouse!

This is a SNAP review for Peek-A-Mouse, created by Elodie Clément and Théo Rivière.

Have you ever played one of those games where you look at a picture for 30 or 60 seconds and then you hide the picture and try to remember all the things that were in it? They’re really fun, but once you’ve done it, there’s not much to do anymore.

But what if you could always recreate the experience with a randomly generated set of items?

Game

With Peek-a-Mouse from Gigamic, you work together with up to five friends, so six people total, to peek into the mice’s house and see what kinds of tchotchkes they’ve stolen from us humans! (But it’s okay! they’re just designing their house! It’s all cast-offs.)

Peek-A-Mouse is designed for kids age 5-9, but adults can play it too, and really enjoy it. A game lasts 15-20 minutes.

Art

I love the mouse house – it’s so cute!. There’s a ton of detail on the inside – and on the outside too! You have to put the house together the first time you play, but after that, it’s a quick open and flip to get everything set up.

There are sturdy double-sided wooden tokens that go inside the house, and game mats with cardboard tokens for the challenges.

Mechanics

Once you’ve put everything together the first time, setup is a breeze. Pull off the game sleeve and pick up the top of the house. Take the interior out, remove the pieces, and put it back, flipped over. Put the house on top and you’ve got a mouse house!

Pick a question board based on the difficulty you want and set up the board with a few cardboard question tokens (these are your goals). Take the wooden tokens that correspond with that difficulty (you can tell by the rings on the tokens).

Drop the tokens into the top of the mouse house and give it a few stirs to mix them up. When everyone is ready, put the flashlight in hole in the top of the house and hit the 30 second timer button.

Now, quick! Everyone looks through the windows and tries their best to commit to memory what tokens are where, and what side is up! Don’t forget to look in other windows and talk to one another to help you remember.

When the light goes out, time is up. Now it’s time to test your memory with the question board! Answer questions on the board like, “Was the button in the bathroom?” or “Which side of each token was face up?”

Your team, which is everyone, gets points for every correct answer. Answer four questions per round for four rounds. A perfect score is 16 points!

Expectations

When we first saw the game, I was already impressed by the cuteness and the way everything fits together. But I was expecting a simple cooperative game for kids – the box says ages 5-9.

Based on the look of it, I figured memory would play a big role, maybe some early reading skills.

But as we “unpeeled the onion” that is the Peek-a-Mouse box, we found some things that surprised us.

Surprises

Our expectations were right, but they barely scratched the surface with this game. The “mouse house” is so cleverly designed, but so are the question mats! They ask questions without any language at all. All the symbols tie very clearly to the house and the items, and you can mark “yes” or “no” with these tokens that have a checkmark and an X.

The industrial design on this game is incredible. Everything is so smartly designed to make it just work for kids.

The window drapes and everything else on the inside of the box matches with the color of the floors of the rooms so you know how you’re supposed to orient the house on top. How cool is that? There’s also a mark on the outside of the house – match up the vines and the ladder.

The box size is a little big, but for what this game is, I’d rather have this big box than something that has to be taken apart and set up every time. Having the house pre-built makes this a game kids can pull out and play by themselves, and that’s a huge win for every parent out there.

It’s only because everything is so great that I even noticed one thing that bugged me, which is that you still need the book – or to commit to memory – what color tokens correspond to what difficulty level(s). You have a mat for every difficulty level – just show the colors on the mat!

I was also really surprised at how hard the game can get. That hardest difficulty is really challenging unless you have several players good at observing. But more than three players (or maybe four) start to get in each others’ way when looking through the windows.

Recommended?

Peek-a-Mouse is a wholesome family game, with kids and adults able to play together to try to win.

Peek-a-Mouse is perfect for this setting. It doesn’t require deep rules understanding, it doesn’t require reading, truly anyone can play. You could play younger than age 5 as long as they have the patience for it.

We do recommend Peek-a-Mouse – we’re going to give this 4 and a half household items out of 5.

Find it on Amazon or directly from Gigamic – or ask for it in your friendly local source for toys and games.

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Peek-A-Mouse from Gigamic for this review.

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