Growing up, memory games were always some of my most favorite. 

I remember my mother telling me how when I was just a little kid I would play game after game of memory matching against her until she could no longer beat me. To this day, I still love to play them and now have the pleasure of playing them with my own children.

I believe that memory games are not only a fun game to play, but also an incredibly useful educational tool to help young minds learn. So I’m always on the lookout for great ones to add to our shelves, and luckily for my children, the selection is far superior than my glory days of “guess and flip” tiles. 

Now they have games with a working carousel! And yes, it sounds as amazing as you’d think!

What is Monsieur Carrousel? 

Monsieur Carrousel is a cooperative memory game. Players work together to help all of the children ride the carousel before the rain begins to fall. 

How do you play?

To play, first decide what level of difficulty you wish to play. The six, double-sided seating discs each have different difficulty levels, easy, medium, and hard. Choose which level you’d like to play and insert it into the carousel.

Then assemble the carousel. This part is relatively easy, but if your kids are younger, you’ll probably want to help them. 

Once the carousel is set up, you’re ready to play!

Each player’s turn is divided into two phases. In Phase one you’ll place a kid on the carousel. In Phase two you’ll check the weather.

On your turn, roll the die. The color you’ve rolled is the seat you are able to fill on the carousel. There are six colors on the carousel, each repeated once for a total of 12 seats. 

Take a kid token not yet on the carousel and place it in an empty seat that matches the color you rolled. 

Make sure you remember what seat the kid is on. Are they sitting on a a lion? Alligator? Dolphin? You’ll need to remember this later!

Once you’ve placed them in their seat, it’s time to see what the weather is like.

Spin the carousel around. When it stops, check to see what section of the board the kid you just placed on the carousel stopped. 

The board is divided into two distinct sections. On the left is the yellow sunny side and on the right is the blue rainy side. If the kid stops in the rainy zone, that means the rain is coming. Place one of the blue raindrops on the board. 

If the kid is in the sun section, great, the sun is in the sky and you get to place a sunbeam on the board. Select a yellow sun beam and place it in one of the troughs on the board. Each trough needs two sun beam pieces to complete it, but each beam is just slightly different in size so they can only fit a certain way. If you choose wrong, you must place the beam back in the reserve. If you choose correctly it can stay. If that beam completes a trough section, then you may remove a raindrop from the board. This then ends your turn.

But what if you rolled the die and there was not an open seat in that color? 

If all of the seats in that color were filled then turn the carousel. When it stops, look at the seat Monsieur Carrousel is pointing to with his finger. If that seat is empty, add a kid token to it and proceed to phase 2. 

If the seat already has a kid token on it then you must now use your memory to guess what seat the kid is sitting on. You and the other players can work together on this!

Once you’re ready, make your guess. Then lift the kid token to check your answer. 

If you were correct, you get to put a sunbeam fragment on the board. 
If you were incorrect, you must place a raindrop on the sky. Your turn is now over.

The game ends when either all of the kids have been placed on the carousel or all of the raindrops have been placed on the board.

What do we think?

This is another fantastic game from LOKI, and much like their game SOS Dino, Monsieur Carrousel has incredible table presence. There are very few games designed for kids that go to this level of production. 

When we set it up for the first time I couldn’t believe it. Honestly. It is one of the coolest designed games I’ve seen in a while and it is just gorgeous! The art, design, and illustrations are simply beautiful. I need a Monsieur Carrousel children’s book stat! Can’t you just see this game as a cute picture book?

Okay, anyway, moving on!

All of the wooden pieces are high quality, well painted, and sized just right for preschool hands. These all fit into their recessed sections on the board and carousel, keeping them nicely in place. The fact that my kids can play Monsieur Carrousel as their usual wiggly selves and not have the pieces go flying everywhere anytime the board is jostled just a bit is such a benefit.

The 3D carousel is beautiful. With the natural wooden details, vibrant colors on the base, and fun spinning ability, it practically magnetizes kids to it. Heck, I’m magnetized to it!

As a mom, I was worried that it wouldn’t hold up since the kids this game is geared towards are young preschoolers. Little hands aren’t always the gentlest, even when they are trying really hard. 

So far it has held up just fine, even with my rambunctious boys. There was one piece with a dowel rod that didn’t get glued perfectly and popped off. We were able to fix it easily using our super glue and haven’t had a problem since. 

That being said, you’ll definitely want to be careful with this one. If it were to take a tumble off the table, it would probably break when it hit the floor. 

Game wise, even though its a simple game, there’s a lot going on for preschoolers, yet not too much to overwhelm.

Monsieur Carrousel is a very good memory game, not just because it is well produced, but because it challenges kids to remember the choices that they have made throughout the game. 

Your typical guess and flips involve starting the game with none of the information known. Yet here, you’ll get to choose what you’ll need to remember as you select each child to place on the carousel. This is a great way for kids to build gradually up to remembering each of the 12 carousel seats. I also like to use this as an opportunity to help kids learn different ways to remember things. Maybe we want to put the kid wearing the green shirt on the alligator because his shirt is “green like an alligator” or the girl holding the apple wants to feed it to the elephant. This is not only helpful in this game, but a good memory tool to learn early as well. 

Even though there’s only 12 seats to remember, it’s still not easy. After you get a some kids placed and have spun the carousel a few times, it becomes more difficult to remember what you did at the beginning of the game. Luckily, there are multiple seating discs for the carousel with varying degrees of difficulty. This increases the longevity of the game in your home as it’ll grow with your child. For reference, our son Oliver is 3.5 and uses the easiest disc while our daughter Alice (7) is still challenged by the more difficult ones. 

The sunbeam fragments add a nice element of spatial awareness; another important skill kids are developing. The simple puzzle is made tricky by many sunbeam pieces seeming similarly sized. Finding the right one requires some thought. This also serves to make the memory aspect more challenging as children switch their focus between remembering the carousel seating and adjusting the weather elements of the game.

Monsieur Carrousel takes about 15 minutes to play, sometimes less depending on how quickly you can place kids on the carousel. This is the perfect time for young kids and short attention spans. It is also easy enough that my three older kids, (7, 5, 3) have been able to play this together without my help. 

For me that’s a huge sign of a well designed kids game. The rules and mechanics are straight forward and engaging enough that the kids can play it correctly on their own without the help of an adult reminding them what they need to do. This also helps foster their growing need for independence and helps them learn to problem solve on their own.

Summary

Developing good memory skills will help make learning easier for kids. Strengthening their focus and concentration is important, especially as young kids begin to enter school. Games like Monsieur Carrousel are a great option for this! I love that kids can have a game that is both beautiful and helps them become better learners. It’s even better that this is a game we all enjoy playing together as a family, and one that is simple enough that our kids can play together confidently without parents. 

Because of its unique memory challenge for kids, multiple difficulty levels for increased replayability, and the fantastic components, I highly recommend it for families with preschool aged children. 

A special thank you to the great folks at LOKI and IELLO for sending us a copy of Monsieur Carrousel to review. As always our reviews and opinions are our own.
Monsieur Carrousel will be able to purchase at the end of 2019. To find out more information, click HERE.

Game Info:
Title: Monsieur Carrousel
Ages: 4+
Designer: Sara Zarian
Artist: Apolline Etienne
Publisher: LOKI
Published: 2019

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Farmini Review
SOS Dino Review
Dragon’s Breath Review
3 Unique Memory Games for Kids