SNAP Review – Turtle Splash

Splish splash, I was takin’ a bath… or maybe I was playing hide and seek? Maybe a little of both in Turtle Splash.

It’s another SNAP review from The Family Gamers!

Game

Turtle Splash is a dexterity and memory game by Joel & Rafael Escalante and published by Lucky Duck Kids.

2-4 players ages 5 and up, maybe 4 and up? can play in about 15 minutes.

Art

Anitra, it’s adorable. Let’s talk about the art in Turtle Splash.

First, take a look at these baby animals! They are the cutest thing. I absolutely love them. There’s a very chubby tiger, and a cute little orangutan.

But we can’t overlook the design of this cardboard “lake” and ramp, either. They are sturdy and fit together nice and snugly.

They’ll definitely stand up to some rough handling from little kids. And they actually come pre-built!

Mechanics

Let’s talk about how to play Turtle Splash – the mechanics.

Set up the river ramp and the lake, and give every player a personal board and three ball tokens. Mix up the 12 animal tiles face-down, and arrange them in a grid where everyone can see them.

On your turn, flick the wooden turtle token down the river ramp. If you can get him to touch the center of the lake, you can flip three animal tiles; if you reach the lake but not the center, you can flip two tiles; and if you didn’t even reach the lake (or overshot, oops, and it flew off the table) you can flip a single tile.

Once you have flipped tiles, compare them with your personal board, which shows the baby animals in three tracks. Is the next animal in order in any of your tracks visible in the face-up tiles? Then you can advance your beach ball token to that animal on your board.

It’s possible to advance more than one space if the matching animals have all been flipped face-up this turn.

If you didn’t find any of the animals you need, take a swim ring, to use for an additional tile flip on your next turn.

At the end of your turn, flip all the animal tiles face-down again, then let the next player flick the turtle and guess where the animals are!

The game ends when a player gets all three of their beach ball tokens to the end of the rows on their board.

“You found all your animal friends! Hooray!”

Expectations

We love working with Lucky Duck. We know they’ve put a lot of thought into their Kids line, to make games that are really well suited for kids to play. This is the first Lucky Duck Kids game that doesn’t need a mobile app, so I wondered what would set it apart.

We knew the box art was really cute. Flicking games usually have us looking more at the “field” than at the pieces, though. So we weren’t really sure how much of these cute animals we’d actually be able to look at and pay attention to when we were playing.

Surprises

So what surprised us about Turtle Splash?

The design of the ramp and the lake is even better than we hoped. They’re so easy to put together, and they stay together! I mentioned before, they’re pre-assembled, so when you open the box for the first time, all you have to do is punch out a couple of tokens, and you can get started.

Because it’s a memory game, we spend a lot of time looking at this animal art – I’m really glad it’s so cute!

Although there are multiple steps to a turn – which might make it hard for younger kids – it all flows really well. You flick, then you flip tiles, then you compare and try to move your beach balls.

But needing to find all twelve animals, in some sort of order, makes this game take longer than we expected. It can get a little bit frustrating when you can’t find the one animal you need!

On the other hand, I like that players always get at least one tile flip – no matter how bad their aim is with the turtle… Earning a “swim ring” when you don’t find any of the animals you need takes the edge off the frustration of failure, too.

One more thing I really like about this – these rails are really easy to take off, so if you need to change difficulty level for different levels of play, you can do it between turns! It’s not a big deal.

Recommended?

Do we recommend Turtle Splash?

We would definitely recommend Turtle Splash for families with young kids – like between the ages of 4-9. Older kids and adults might enjoy it once in a while as a quick game that’s very simple but not too, too easy.

What are we going to rate Turtle Splash from Lucky Duck Kids?

I think we’re going to rate it four and a half splashes out of five.

Get it direct from Lucky Duck Games or ask for it at your friendly local game store.

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Turtle Splash from Lucky Duck Games for this review.

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