Race to the Treasure was a surprise random discovery for me. I had never heard of it before I ran across a perfect condition copy at a neighborhood garage sale. A particular young tutoring student of mine is still learning to be a good sport, and I thought a cooperative game would be fun. I was quite pleasantly surprised at what a great mathematical game for young children it turned out to be.
The game board is a coordinate grid using letters and numbers. Players start the game by rolling a letter die and a number die. They then find the coordinates on the board to place four keys and an “ogre snack.” The 4 and 7 year olds I was playing with were able to learn how to find the coordinates after just a little instruction. It would be a great way to introduce the game Battleship.
Game play proceeds with players drawing a card from a stack that either has a piece of a path or an ogre. If you draw an ogre you must place the card on the ogre path. If you draw a piece of the path you need to connect it to the path on the board to reach the treasure. It may require turning the card to connect the path. Some pieces don’t connect to each other so you will have different offshoots of the path. Along the way you must gather 3 of the 4 keys to unlock the treasure chest. The goal is for the players to work cooperatively to gather the keys and complete the path to the treasure before the ogre completes its path. Picking up the ogre snack allows the player to remove one ogre from the ogre path.
Race to the Treasure takes about 20 minutes to play. It can easily be a 2 player game up to probably about 4.
Both kids loved this game and wanted to play it repeatedly. We also extended their interest in coordinates by placing their small squishy toys on the grid. We then rolled the coordinate dice to play “Capture the Squishy!”
