[Ad- gifted product] We play board games together, every other week, at our local Geek Retreat! This week, we tried out Junior Tension, which is a game all about topics and trying to name the things within that topic. It’s pretty easy for all ages to play and with the Junior version, there are a bunch of topics that are related to younger kids topics, like Thomas the Train Engine and Nursery Rhymes, which makes teams of different ages really important in this game.
To play Junior Tension, everyone divides into two teams. A board is placed in the middle of the table, with each team’s meeples on the board, and a deck of cards on each side. The blue deck and the pink deck have no real difference, though Amelia has said the blue deck did “feel more challenging” but I think that’s the luck of the draw on our end. One team will take the scoring unit and select a card from the bottom of whichever deck they feel like. They will then read the two header subjects to the other team. The other team needs to pick the subject they think they know best. These can be things like 3 letter words starting with the letter C, lunchbox items, animals starting with the letter R, characters from the movie Cars, etc. There is really a wide variety of different subjects!
The card is slotted onto the scoring unit, so that the team tracking answers can easily track them, then they start the timer. The team guessing needs to shout out their guesses, and the tracking team needs to say “yes” if they are correct and tick off the box by pushing a small plastic latch to the other side. It’s a really easy tool to use to tell which ones have been said and which have not. At the end of the time, the number of correct answers are counted and the meeple of that team moves across the board. There are golden balloons and popped balloons on the board, which when they are landed on, the team rolls a die. If they land on a golden one, they get to move forward to the color that is shown on the die. If they land on the popped balloon, the opposite happens.
Junior Tension is a very easy to follow, fun game that doesn’t take too long either. We all did really like the tracker for keeping track of the answers, as it just feels like a unique and fun component to the game. The themes that are on the Junior version work well for Robin, who is 9, which is always nice to see, so teams felt really balanced.
I love that the game is very engaging and quite educational. That is so cool…I will check it out.
I have always been a fan of playing board games as a family, especially games that are fun but also educational. I have not played this before and will look out for it when my grandkids are a bit older
I love games like this. It’s so easy to pick up and get right into the fun!
I always get excited about games like this. You can really just jump right in, which is always great when everyone is waiting. LOL.