By Jody Fedele and Martin Uniack
McNeill Designs, LLC
www.McNeillBrighterMinds.com
PO Box 5067
Wilmington, DE 19808
866-520-2555
Twisted Fish is a fun card game. The cover says that it guarantees "outrageous fun every game!" It is truly a high adventure game that your family will enjoy. Designed for ages 6 and up, this game is best played with 3 to 6 players. Inside the box are the Twisted Fish cards, the rules sheet, and a surprise toy. All you need is a small table for the deck of cards.
Twisted Fish is similar to the original "go fish" game. Each player begins with a few cards. The goal is to get a "full basket," which is a complete set of cards of the same Twisted Fish character in each of the colors (red, green, blue, yellow, and purple). Each player asks another player for a specific color and character. For example, player A might have a purple clownfish and asks player B for a yellow clownfish. If player B doesn't have it then player A draws a card from the Fish Pond.
That's the easy way to play! Twisted Fish also has Zinger cards. They have great names like "No Fishing" and "The Dead Scuba Diver." You can use them at any time. They have different purposes. Sometimes you can use the Zinger to see a card in another player's hand. If you don't play the Zinger and you still have it in your hand when a player has played all of his cards, then it is a negative 25 points. Ouch! At the end of the game each player counts up the points that they have from the full baskets and deducts the cards that remained in his hand. This is where the older children in your family can use their logic skills. Some characters are worth 5 points each and others are worth 10 points each. Hopefully, the older children will learn that there is a number advantage to trying for a full basket of a 10-point fish.
Twisted Fish received the 2007 Creative Toy Award of the year. It is truly a creative game with creative illustrations. We played the game with two elementary-aged children and a preschooler. The pictures on the card were clear enough that the preschooler knew what a clownfish looked like. She was able to play all with the family without any great difficulty. Our student who liked to play games loved this game! We had to start out slowly, playing without Zingers on the first round. Now the children ask for it every night after dinner! It was intense and challenging enough for mom, dad, and the older children and graphically appealing for the younger children to want to play too. I also liked that the person who went "out" wasn't always the winner. Sometimes that player had collected full baskets of cards with a 5-point value while another player had full baskets of 15-point cards.
Twisted Fish is not a mindless game. It is an engaging card game. I only found two negatives. I wanted to know why the surprise toy was in the box. Is it for more advanced play? Version 2? The other pitfall was that when there are only two players, the game can take over an hour.
I highly recommend Twisted Fish as a family card game. It has lots of twists in the game that make it fun. Your family will love playing it as my family does. In fact, I hear them calling for another game now!
Product review by Maggi Beardsley, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, August 2008
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