TL;DR: I want to talk about my son's first board game experience. It was bad.
I love board games and want to share that passion with my kids. When my older son, Tobias, was 2 and a half, I went digging, scouring the net for something fun and exciting. I ended up buying Sneaky Snacky Squirrel, a game where a squirrel with OCD collects colorful, radioactive acorns and places them around its log in a vague pentagram.
The game was labeled for 3+ years, and that was worrying for me. We were half a year early. Six months might not seem like much to adults, but for babies, it’s huge—like the difference between crawling and walking, liquids and solids. Six months was a quarter of my son’s life! But, I thought, labels are just guidelines, right? When was the last time anyone ate the recommended single serving size of 15 potato chips instead of the whole bag?
So, we dove in, and surprisingly, we had fun! He loved using the little squirrel tongs to pick up acorns, and he kept asking to play it over and over. The production quality of the toy was great, with the hard rubber of the colorful acorns, the large squirrel-shaped tongs, and the smooth spin dial.
However, over weeks of play, I discovered multiple pain points that my son had with this game. The game itself wasn’t very exciting - it was a kid’s game after all. But before I get into the bad, here are some good things this game taught my 2-year-old then.
The Pros
Turn Taking. This is fundamental in most board games, for sure. But at that age, kids don’t understand what a turn is. Taking turns spinning the dial was something that took longer than I expected to teach, but reinforced patience and observation about the game state and what Papa was doing instead of solely focusing on what he had.
Extended Fine Motor Skills with Tools. We ran through a whole period where we got him to pick up snacks with a pincer grip (thumb and index finger), and the squirrel tongs were an exciting tool that he’d like to use to pick up various household objects. The acorns were also small to grasp and difficult to insert into the log. It required a level of dexterity that was difficult, but not impossible for that age (“i+1” input hypothesis).
Color and Pattern Matching. You know those color-matching wooden blocks you have to put into holes? This was that, but more complex. Turns were a 2-step process where my son had to spin the dial, match the color of the dial with the acorn, and then place that acorn in the corresponding colored hole of the log. There was an additional layer of complexity here where the dial spinning was randomized between colors and effects, and he had to then pay attention to his log to see if the result was a color he had.
Sneaky Snacky Squirrel taught my son some valuable board game basics and gave him good visual and motor exercises to practice through the games. Now, this is mostly production, I want to talk about game design choices because some were downright egregious. I truly wonder what the game designers were trying to do with it and what the playtesters felt about it.
The Cons
Action Space
Here’s the basic action space for the game.
Skipping Turns
Immediately, we see that there is a huge skew towards skipping turns. The dial has 10 sectors, and excluding the 2 wild Acorns actions, players need to land the exact color to get the acorn, skipping their turn when they land on a color they already have. This escalates through the game, where if I complete ⅘ of my log, 4 colors and the Sad Squirrel causes me to skip. That’s a 50% chance of skipping my turn!
For a 3-year-old who is JUST learning about turns in a board game and needing to wait for their turn to come around just to not be able to do anything, this feels terrible. It happened often for Tobias, where he landed on something he already had. He immediately wanted to spin again. Of course he would! He is owed an acorn! So, of course, I house-ruled re-spinning for him.
As parents, as much as we try to teach structure, there’s a point where we simply play the way our kids want to play. We don’t want to turn them off from having fun just because of rules. The right way to play is the way they find fun in playing.
Sad Squirrel is NOT a good action and it should go away. It is a non-action that drags gametime and disappoints children to no merit of the game. On to the next one.
Stealing Acorns
Next is Sneaky Squirrel. Steal an acorn. My son was learning to share toys in school at that age. 2 years later, he still struggles when his baby brother plays with toys he’s not playing with. And while he splits sweets, biscuits, and his horde of soft toys with his younger brother, outright taking away something from him is triggering.
Children have an immense sense of protection of their property. Why are we teaching that it’s okay to take things away from someone else if a rule says so?
While adults understand randomness and are accepting of rules, children really don’t. When he rolled a Sneaky Squirrel, he was embarrassed and didn’t want to take my acorns. He is a kind boy and knew those were my acorns. When it came to my turn and I spun a Sneaky Squirrel, Tobias was not prepared for his acorns to be taken, more so outside of his turn. He broke down crying because he realized his acorn would be taken away.
Don’t take things from children! Stealing as a Take That! mechanism should not be in a game for 3 year olds! Also, there are ZERO bandit-looking squirrels in the book this game was inspired by. Why would the game designer think adding new characters was a great idea?
Old McDonalds had a horse. E-I-E-I-O. And when that horse grew old he would be sent to the glue factory. E-I-E-I-NO!
Table Flip
Lastly, Squirrel Storm. The table flip. All acorns are swept off the logs. I don’t flipping care how thematic this is, or if it’s accurate it is to how squirrels suffer from gale or deforestation, this is a board wipe. Where in the storybook was the freaking storm!?
When you think stealing is bad, this is worse. Every single acorn my son worked for through the game was taken away suddenly AND without warning. This is Yu Gi Oh’s Fiber Jar. This is MTG’s Karn Liberated. No, just, no.
It also didn’t matter if I made sound effects, or asked Tobias to help overturn my log to clear my acorns away. It was the most dreaded result and he hated it. Anytime we spun a storm, we spun again. Why are we not just letting the children win a round, applaud each other, and then start a new game? Why are we forcing everyone to start from scratch? It’s basically playing a new game WITHOUT the victory of a previous game.
I would much rather play 2 rounds than be stuck playing the 1st round with all our acorns taken away in the middle of the game. If you ever see this, game designer from Southern California with Educational Insights, PLEASE explain what the rationale was behind this.
Just a Toy
Of course, this is just a kid’s game inspired by the storybook. I may be too critical or overreacting simply because my child had bad experiences with it. I just think it could have been better. It could’ve been a 6 section spinner (5 colors and 1 wild) and we could call it day. Do away with the effects or even double Acorn, cut the gameplay time down, and my kids would have more rounds of less traumatic game time.
In the end, we house-ruled a bunch of rules to play, but the damage was done. Tobias didn’t want to play because he was scared of spinning. So for a while longer before I sold it, it was no longer a board game, and simply a miscellaneous toy to play with.
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