EGWs6uuBZ3pp-zGuVVdmeLgkJG4 Across the Avenue: Educational Games for PreTeens and Teens During the Quarantine #R&RGames #strategygames

Educational Games for PreTeens and Teens During the Quarantine #R&RGames #strategygames



One of our favorite family activities involves gathering around the table to play board games. What used to be a once a week activity has become our daily saving grace during the quarantine. It's a great way to provide structure to the day, relieve stress, and promote positive family bonding time. We've made our way through just about all of our games, several times over, so we were really excited when the opportunity to review two exciting games from R&R Games, Incorporated came along: Coin Quest and Gobblestones. If you have pre-teens and up in the house and want to find fun new ways to practice academic skills, these are the games for you! 


Coin Quest
Coin Quest is a game of strategy! It's a winner-take-all, secret bidding game requiring players to outbid and outsmart each other  to acquire the best coins. Players are part of a secret cabal of elite coin collectors. The shrewdest collector wins the game! This is a deck building game at its core, only coins replace cards. While it's not a terribly complicated game, it's really best for the pre-teen and up crowd. 

At the start of this game, each player has their own bag and 10  coins. Between all the players the game board tracks the common 6 bids (3 for coins, 3 for points) as well as the scoring. Each round, draw 5 coins randomly from your bag and conduct your bidding behind your own privacy screen. Each player lifts their screen and bids are tallied, gold beats silver, silver beats bronze. Ties are broken by the number on the coin or the additional coins placed on the bid.

Coins won from and used for bids gather in a discard pile to eventually be reused, so your bag of coins grows. Some coins are special, granting special abilities, set collections, or victory points. This all plays together to make for exciting surprises at game's end, where you can surprise other players with your collection!

R&R Games recommends 12+ years of age; 2-6 players; 30 minutes average play time


Gobble Stones
Beware! Fat goblins are slow goblins, but in order to win you need to gobble up the most stones! A simple premise executed beautifully in this game. Set-up the game by placing nine double-sided game boards in a 3 x 3 layout. The total game board has 225 squares with a mix of 6 colors and 6 numbers.

On each turn, you must balance 5 actions: first placing between 0 and 5 tiles over corresponding colors (except grey which is wild), then drawing between 5 and 0 tiles. For example, you lay 2 tiles, you draw 3 tiles, or you lay 5 tiles and draw none (because you're too full from gobbling up points!). Tiles must be laid straight and never diagonally and tiles cannot ever be laid so that any 2 x 2 areas are covered. Any points covered are points earned. The game ends when the tiles to draw run out.

This is an abstract game appealing to almost anyone. It's incredibly easy to learn with minimal set-up time. We've found it's particular popular across age groups. Grandma and Grandpa like the appeal of a Scrabble-like game, while younger generations tend to view it like an app.

R&R Games recommends 10+ years of age; 2-4 players; 30 minutes average play time

These games have allowed us to practice academic skills while having loads of fun with family at the same time! We recommend adding them to your own collection to brighten up quarantine time and your upcoming summer vacation!

Where to Purchase
Head over to R&R Games to browse their entire collection and have games delivered directly to your door!


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Disclaimer: The products in this post were provided by R&R Games. As always, our posts are our own, honest opinions.