Game Review: Grizzly Gears
Today’s review is for Grizzly Gears by Smart Games.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary game for review from Timberdoodle. All views expressed are my own.
Grizzly Gears
Like most other Smart Games, Grizzly Gears is a single-player puzzle game. This one focuses on planning, spatial insight, problem-solving, concentration, and flexible thinking. It is recommended for ages 7 and up.
What’s Included
Grizzly Gears includes a game board, nine rotating puzzle pieces with trees, 6 smaller puzzle pieces with forest-themed figurines, and a booklet with 80 challenges and solutions.
How to Play
Each side of the game board has three “home bases” that match up with the character puzzle pieces: the camper goes to the tent, the beaver on land goes to the beaver in the water, the woodcutter goes to the stack of logs, the fawn goes to the buck, Baby Bear goes to Mama Bear, and the rabbits go together.
To play, choose a challenge from the booklet. As always, I recommend starting from Challenge 1, even if it is super easy. That helps familiarize yourself with the game so you understand what the challenge is asking for as you go along.
The object is to move each character to its home base. Set up the board according to the diagram in the challenge booklet. It’s important to arrange each piece according to its position and orientation rootherwise they may be blocked from rotating to solve the challenge.
To solve the challenge you will rotate trees, by which you will also rotate any adjacent character piece. Continue rotating trees until all the character pieces are in their home positions.
Challenge 1, pictured above, only includes one character piece, making it pretty easy. The puzzles get more difficult as you progress through the book. There are 16 Starter challenges, 24 Junior challenges, 20 Expert challenges, and 20 Master challenges.
My Thoughts
One of my favorite features of SmartGames is how cute the pieces are. I especially love this one with the wilderness theme.
While it’s not as compact as some, the pieces fit nicely into the hinged box with flaps that tuck in to close up for storage. Grizzly Gears is one we’ll be keeping in our trailer for camping. It’s the perfect theme for a picnic table game, don’t you think?
More Reviews
If you’re intrigued by single-player thinking games check out these other Smart Games I’ve reviewed:
