Calling all Firefighters! (And parents looking for a game that plays FAST!)
Your help is desperately needed! We need to put out a fire but our water hoses are in a jumble! Race to be the first person to untangle their firehose in this fun and fast paced game from HABA!
How Do You Play In a Flash Firefighters?
Everyone gets a puzzle board that they assemble, along with a fire hydrant.
All of the hose pieces are placed in the center of the table and given a mix. There’s also a water spray token that should be placed within reach of all players as well.
On the count of three, players all begin grabbing hose pieces, one at a time, to add to their hydrant and build a hose to the bottom of their track. Once you build a hose that reaches the bottom you grab the water spray token, add it to the bottom of your hose and say “Water is Go!”
You win that round, collect a firefighting medal, add it to your board, and then move your hydrant back one space while the other players move theirs forward one.
Then begin another round. The first person to collect three firefighting medals is the winner.
What Do We Think?
In a Flash Firefighters is aptly named because it truly plays out in a flash!
This is the perfect game for nights where your kids want to play something with you but you also want to send them to bed. (We’ve all been there, right?) This takes about 5 to 15 minutes to play which is perfect!
I absolutely love that it has a built in mechanism to help slow down players who may be doing a lot better than others. Since the winner of a round moves their hydrant back they’ll have to find that much more hose before they can win again.
When we play with the kids, Adam and myself just start with our hydrants all the way at the back to account for the large age gap. When our son Oliver plays (4) We let him put his hydrant all the way at the front to account for his age. It’s customizable to suit your needs as a family which is great.
This is a great game to help kids improve their processing speeds and visual perception skills. Some of the hose pieces look like they match up but they are off ever so slightly. Kids have to pay close attention to find the hose pieces that they need so they don’t have to redo their work.
The only frustrating part of the game is that the tiles slide underneath the starting piece. I wish they would have designed the hydrant piece to keep the hose tiles from sliding beneath as it does impact game play. It’s not uncommon for someone to not realize that their hose tiles have slid up on their track and while they think they still need to connect more pieces, they’ve actually built everything they needed to.
This is easily fixed however with some superglue. The game has some extra cardboard after punching out all of your tiles, I recommend taking a few of those pieces and super glueing them underneath the cardboard starting tile so that you can create a backstop to prevent this issue.
Summary
In a Flash Firefighters is the perfect simple game to play when you need an activity but don’t have a lot of time on your hands. Because it plays so fast, helps kids develop important processing skills, and has a great build in mechanism to keep things friendly and balanced, we recommend families check this one out!
A special thank you to our friends at HABA for sending us a copy of In a Flash Firefighters for review. As always our thoughts and opinions are our own,
Game Info:
Title: In a Flash Firefighters
2-4 Ages 5+
Designer: Rudi Biber
Artist: Pascal Nöldner
Publisher: HABA
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