Spin Monkeys

Spin Monkeys
From Rio Grande Games

About the game

You are a monkey in the jungle when one day a wayward carnival makes a stop. You and your fellow monkeys jump in the bumper cars and away you go. You have no idea why there is fruit all over the arena floor, but you aim to grab as much of it for yourself as possible.

Our Thoughts

During the afternoon of Family Day (back in February), we decided to try out a new game we had received.  Spin Monkeys is very different than the conventional games you will find in toy stores.  This game is available in specialty game stores through Canada and the US.  The difference with this game is that you have to be strategic with the angles you want to use.

The game come with 8 monkeys, a bunch of fruity tokens, and 139 movement cards.  So when you play this game you never know how it will finish.   The basic instructions of the game are fairly simply but the rules attached to the consequences of the travels across the board can be overwhelming at times.  Here’s what could happen when you play, you might slip on a banana peel which will rotate your monkey and sent him toward a different direction or you can bump into another monkey and create a ripple effect with that monkey send elsewhere on the board.   Same goes when you run into the edges of the arena.   And at times, a chain reaction will happened where multiple monkeys bump into each other…

Each player get five cards to begin with.  You have to play all these cards before getting more cards.   When collecting fruits on the way, you need to change the banana for a banana peel.   Before another player can play, you have to resolve any event happening like banana peels, collisions, and edges.   The movement cards will indicate the angle you need to adjust before travelling through the board.  What the close-ups of the game board and the movement cards

  

Here Dominic is reacting to one of his moves.  He was pleased with it.

A bird eye view of the game…

The game takes about 45 minutes to play and you can have up to 8 players.  In our case, we were four monkeys trying to pick up as much fruits as possible.  Turned out that we didn’t have much chain reactions during our game and I suspect that this happens more often when you have more players.

To my surprised, I won the game!

The game is geared for 13+ but even if my two oldest sons were not quite in age (almost 9 and 11) when we played, we had some fun and loved to discover this game.   It is a tricky at first but once you understand ALL the rules, you can have a blast with your family and friends.   I definitively won’t play this game with our younger kids because it takes a bit of logic to understand our to spin your monkey and all.    As interesting and out-of-the-ordinary this game can be, we were not as hooked as when we played Monster Factory from the same company.  However, this game will require concentration, strategy and quick thinking in order to help you win.   It’s perfect for your teens to practice their angles and to develop logic and rapidity.  This game is definitively not a game that you will play daily but for special days like Family Day in Ontario, it’s a great game to build new memories. 

Curious about Spin Monkeys and want to get one for your family?  You can purchase it at one of the providers of Rio Grand Games.  To find where you can get Spin Monkeys in your town, go to their search engine.  In Ottawa, you can probably find it at Toys On Fire, Wizard’s Tower, The Comic Book Shoppe, Fandom II, and Strategy Games. 

The game is also available on amazon.com.

Disclaimer: Thanks to Rio Grande Games for sending me the above mentioned products for review purposes . I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the Sponsor in any way. All opinions expressed here are only my own.