Dodo Review

In a sea of competitive board games and trading card games, sometimes it’s nice to just play a game amongst family and friends where you work together to get something done. Dodo is one such cooperative tabletop game, where your goal is to lead a massive egg down to your boat by building platforms along the way to carry the egg safely into your clutches. Given its age range (6+) it makes an egg-cellent game for children to be involved with, as well.

Product: Dodo

Developer: Frank Bebenroth, Marco Teubner

Publisher: Thames & Kosmos

Price: $34.95

Age: 6+

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The first and only true test of patience in Dodo comes from its initial setup. Building the tower and removing all of the small cardboard tokens takes a bit of time on the first go, but as with most games, every other setup is relatively painless. Thankfully, all of your building work is immediately rewarded with an imposing tower that sits on your table. Beyond the tower and its supports, all other pieces are made of cardboard, save the dodo “egg” that rolls down the tower during play.

While there are many tactile elements to Dodo, it is fundamentally a timed memory game. Supporting 2-4 players, the objective of the game is to take turns rolling a dice that tells you what building materials you need to complete your next platform. Once the die is cast, you flip over one of the building tokens; if the token matches, it goes onto the designated area on the platform until all materials required are present. If the token does not match, you simply flip over the token and move onto the next player, who gets another crack at it. While all of this is going on, the dodo egg rolls down the tower slowly, creating a bit of a more frantic atmosphere with the inclusion of a timed element to play. Once the egg falls off the edge, you lose. If instead you are able to build every required platform before the egg crashes to its demise, it will simply roll onto your boat, safe and sound.

Despite the egg’s slow crawl ever downward, the time allotted to achieve victory is quite long. Even playing on the “harder” difficulty, there is very little threat of failure with a team of adults. That calculus no doubt changes with young children in the mix, but I still feel the time allotted is lenient enough to play without panic. If nothing else, including children into play actually increases the fun level, as their excitement is both infectious and debilitating in some respects. This is an extremely simple game, with little in the way of decision-making, but unforced errors can add up and lead to failure.

Dodo has great board presence and a great aesthetic.

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One major negative to the game is its all-cardboard pieces. While this no doubt drives down production costs, it also drives down durability of the pieces. Some of our pieces already have noticeable wear after only a few sessions. Given how vital interconnectivity of the pieces is to the game, this is a major issue for long-term play.

Verdict

Overall, I loved playing this game the few times I’ve set it up, but its simplicity does make it a bit harder to rate. The game is made to be playable by young children and adults alike, and while it succeeds on the lower spectrum here, it's not much of a game for adults. The aesthetic of the art and board presence are really great, but actually playing the game wears out its welcome quick, as there will never be any twists or complications along the way — you simply roll to victory.

Image Credits: Thames & KOSMOS

Disclosure: We received a free review copy of this product from the publisher.