Santa’s Rooftop Scramble Review

Yes, yes I am mentioning the C word again, but this time it is to tell you all about a lovely game from Ravensburger called Santa’s Rooftop Scramble.  We are starting to think about Christmas in this house (rather reluctantly) and we have even been making wrapping paper today, so the children were quite happy to put this new game through its paces and see what it is all about.

Setting the game up

My first advice is to take some time to read the instructions and get the game set up the first time you are going to play.  Do this before the children sit down excited to play or ensure that they help with the setting up; all of the ‘present’ counters need to be  pushed out and the chimneys are put in place.  There are packs of cards to be unwrapped and put in the correct places and a spinner put together.  Allow five or ten minutes.

Playing

The idea of the game is that you are Santa preparing to deliver your presents to the children.  Suitable for 2-6 players, each player is dealt five letters to Santa which contain the picture, name and house number of a child and the toy that they want for Christmas.  The first job is to gather your toys.  Using the spinner, if the toy you land on is on one of the letters, you pick up the toy counter and once all of your toys are collected safely in your sack, you head to the board and the race to deliver your toys begins.

Once on the board, you are racing the other Santas to get to the right address on the board to deliver your present.  The first Santa to deliver all of his presents is the winner.  There are of course obstacles that could help or hinder your deliveries in the shape of spaces or cards that send you back to the workshop, allow you to deliver a present immediately to name but a few that add an element of surprise.

What did we think?

This is a really fun game.  The suggested age of the game is 5 – 99 and really anyone could play and enjoy this game,  the surprise element of the board game itself means that anyone can win and this is very useful when you have a range of different ages playing at the same time.

Visually it is really appealing and the children liked the idea of posting the present tokens into the chimneys that are set up in the box.  If you are playing with younger children, you could adapt the game but having a smaller number of letters; with A (who is 4) we used three letters and this made the game a little easier and quicker for her.

Everyone liked the game and it has certainly got everyone thinking about Christmas.  This is a perfect family game for the Christmas season.  Yes, it is a seasonal game but that is not a bad thing.  We have books and decorations that we all love getting out at Christmas time and this would be exactly the same.

A great family festive fun game.  We really loved it and it will be on our list of things to do on the run up to Christmas day, that’s for sure.

RRP £18 – 20

We were sent a copy of this game for the purpose of this review.  All opinions and images are our own.