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The moon seems simultaneously so big and yet so small. Like you could pick it out of the sky and pop it in your pocket. Well, if you had a pocket that could cope with the 21.9 billion cubic kilometres of rock, that is!
Luckily, the super clever folk at Kosmos have turned that child-like wonder into a super fun dexterity game called Catch the Moon that is trickier than it first looks!
Mission To The Moon
As you may have guessed, Catch the Moon is about climbing up into the night sky to grab that globe of glorious Gouda….haha okay so even I know the moon is not made of cheese. But how cool would that be?!
And how do you do it? Well, there is a bunch of random wooden ladders for a start. Two straight ones are fitted into the cute cloud base, and the rest are piled into the fancy furry box insert ripe for picking! Then you roll a dice. If it shows a 1 ladder face, you have to pick a ladder at random and, using only one hand, you must add it to the existing ones so that it’s only touching one other ladder. Roll a 2 ladder face, and you’ll do the same but touching two. Roll a crescent moon, however, and now you’re cooking with rocket fuel. You’ve got to place your ladder so that its highest point is loftier than any other ladder in the pile!
If you drop your ladder or any ladders fall off onto the cloud base or the table, they are removed from the game, and you receive a raindrop. The game ends when either (a) all the ladders are used or (b) all 7 raindrops have been taken. And the winner is the player with the fewest raindrops in total!
Catching And Dropping
This is a delightfully themed, quick-playing, super fun dexterity game. Everything about it is charming; the components, the theme. We popped the lid with our 7 year old, and his eyes lit up. Opening as wide as two full moons! And for good reason; the gameplay is that magical mix of instant action, nervous anticipation, and wild relief!
Plus, we big kids were just as impressed. Catch the Moon is definitely not as easy as it sounds! Those 1 ladder moves are tricksy, and I made it rain more times than I care to admit!
I won’t lie – rolling a crescent moon is extremely exciting! Trying to put the ladder higher than all the others and waiting to see if it stays is a cheeky-squeaky moment! And what’s even better for me is that everybody has to play one-handed! So for once, I am not really at a disadvantage when it comes to stacking and building (although I am now an adopted leftie so there’s always that excuse!).
Lunar Ladders
The little wooden ladders are so cute. It’s like they were made for the wee mice who scurry around our hen house looking for spilt corn. They are bent in different shapes, and some have rungs missing (on purpose! No need to call Kosmos!). The raindrops are lovely chunky wooden tokens too, and it all slots onto a cloud base that looks champion on the table. I am slightly worried that we might play this so much that we end up snapping a ladder or two. But that is surely the sign of an excellent game – wearing out solid components through overuse must be a publisher’s dream!
Catch The Moon
Catch the Moon has caught our attention and our hearts. It’s not complicated, and it doesn’t have eleventy billion mechanisms or parts. But I would not hesitate for a moment to bring this to the table with any group I know. Old, young, big, small, newbie or veteran gamer. I don’t say this often, but I think it’s a game with universal appeal; there are no language, no colours, no barriers. Everybody is going to want to have a go at Catching the Moon!
