Number of Players: 2-5 Players
Playing Time: 20 minutes per chapter, 25 chapters total
Take the rudder in your hand and create new adventures! The brave Capt’n Pepe sails across the world’s oceans with his wild animal crew. Accompany him on every sea mile, go on adventures, open treasure chests, create your treasure book, and defeat Madame Goldtooth. Can you find the “seven treasures” before the evil pirate plunges the world into dark times? A cooperative legacy game.
- Game material fit for pirates: 3D ship, filled treasure chests, and high-quality wooden crew figures and rudders
- Adventure book with 25 chapters for exciting game stages of 20 minutes each
- More than 100 stickers to create a treasure map and adventure book
- Number of players: 2-5
- Playing time: 20 minutes per chapter, 25 chapters total
- Designed for ages 6 and up
M –
This game has a hold on my kids
My girls are 6 & 7 and received this as a Christmas gift. They were immediately interested in it and couldn’t wait to start. We usually do a level or two at a time so we are slowly working our way through. We have completed 8 of the levels out of 25, so there is a lot of game to play for the price.I personally found the game components to be sturdy and haven’t had any issues with any of them. My husband and I are both impressed by the story line and the QR codes that allow the story to be read to us. A very cute & entertaining game for the whole family.
Yusuf Zahri –
HABA hits a home run for cooperative, long-term, children’s games
The Reasonable Reviewer family has been fans of HABA games since the 1980s when we were stationed in Germany. Without fail, the games have high quality components, and the games grab children’s attention.There has been a surge in the popularity of long-play (campaign style), cooperative games for adults.Now, HABA has captured the same feel in a game that the kids will love.The basic game involves moving your meeples around the deck to match the color of the meeple with the oar.Over the next twenty-five games, you progressively add new rules and specific challenges. You also add new gaming pieces in the way of the ten treasure chests that come with the game.HABA understands kids. You are never required to move on. You can play the same level time after time after time.In fact, kids love repetition, and during each game, you repeat the game play section three times.The game is beautifully colored and made of high quality parts that will last the entire twenty-five game campaign.We are saving the game for an upcoming birthday. I will add some more after the grand-angels have had a chance to play it a few times. (This is one game that will stay at grandpa’s.)I highly recommend this game.
Sarah –
Fun but very complicated!
Played this with my three kids today (ages 8, 6, and 4) and we had a lot of fun with it.But there were definitely things (good and bad) that I didn’t expect going into it.First off, the game is basically like a story which was pretty cool. There is a book included that you read and each chapter has an adventure that your pirates go on.The ultimate goal of each chapter/round is to get each colored pirate in front of their correctly colored ore before the time runs out. With rules like no jumping other pirates and having to move only to connecting dots, it makes it more challenging and kind of like of a brain puzzle. The game is cooperative so you work together (which I loved).The story element was neat and I liked that they even included QR codes that lead to the website where each chapter of the story is read in a more theatrical way. This really added to the atmosphere of the game.That being said, there are A LOT of elements to playing the game. There is a whole (thick) rule book that you have to read as you play. Along with the treasure boxes, thumbs up chips, ores and pieces, adventure book, map with stickers, etc, etc. It was a lot to figure out things as we went along and a lot of reading the rule book as we played to figure out how to play.The game is also very long. Like we only did the Introductory game, prologue, and chapter 1 and then set it aside to finish another day because that took over an hour to do that much.Still, my kids had a lot of fun playing it and I liked that it encourages teamwork. It’s just probably overly complicated for parents to figure out as wiggly kids are waiting for you to get to the next step.P.S. I also don’t like the the treasure map and treasure book stickers are not reusable. How will they play that part again? Do we have to buy more maps and stickers? Making them reusable stickers would’ve made more sense.
Tim N. –
Fun game for kids
In the digital age, I find spending time with the family doing other things such as board games more important than ever so we’re always on the lookout for unplugged activities.This game from HABA, which is known for their games more geared towards younger audiences, is a good addition to any boardgame collection. This is a ‘legacy’ or ‘campaign’ style game, meaning you continue to build on the progress you’ve made so far with each play by progressing through the chapters.The main gameplay consists of players taking turns moving around crew members around the ship to their correspondingly colored oars. The crew and oar locations are determined at random over 3 rounds and must be completed before time runs out using the included hourglass timer.As you progress through the chapters, new elements are gradually introduced which increases the difficulty in moving the crew to their oars. By completing a chapter, you’re rewarded with stickers to add to the included map and to add to the main book as a keepsake.The game components are what I would consider to be above average to high quality. The wooden crew and oar pieces are well made and the cardboard boat you assemble works well enough. The instructions are decent enough in explaining the gameplay.One interesting optional feature with this game is the audio recordings of the chapter text that you can access via QR code and the voice acting is decent enough. If you want to go completely unplugged though, you can read out the chapter text in your best pirate voice yourself, which I recommend.My kids and I enjoyed this game and would recommend it if you’re interested in this type of gameplay.
laurie –
Begin your Epic adventure
The graphics are so engaging and colorful, perfect for kids. This game is unlike traditional board games and the players can change the outcome of the game based on how they play. This game also has excellent audio stories that you can play through a QR code or you can read the story in the adventure book on your own. This game is a cooperative style game, all players work together to finish each chapter, 25 chapters in all. This game really is unlike any other game we have, it’s well designed, printed and made.
Slippery Jim –
If I could give this 6 stars, I would
This is a children’s legacy game masterpiece.One of the things my small daughter and I like to do together is play board games. She enjoys a variety of them, and is willing to try almost anything once. But I’ve never seen her so obsessed with a particular game before.We first joined Capt’n Pepe’s crew on a Saturday morning, and played through several chapters. She didn’t want to stop, but finally I had to go do something else. As soon as I was free again, she badgered me into playing more. And she kept doing this throughout the weekend — we got through 22 of the 25 chapters in two days, and only stopped at that point because she realized we were about to finish and wanted to save a little bit for Monday.This is not to say that the campaign is over too quickly — the estimate of 20 minutes per chapter is about right (once you’ve gotten the flow under your belt), so we put well over eight hours into the experience. She enjoyed every minute of it, and honestly so did I. Most people would probably play it over a longer period of time than we did, and fortunately it’s easy to set up for quick sessions or longer ones, as it pleases you (the assembled boat sits in the box without needing to be taken apart, for instance).The core of playing is a fundamentally simple mini game of moving crew pieces around to get them to their matching colored oars. Doing this under time pressure is what makes it engaging and challenging, though in its vanilla form it didn’t take long for the two (or occasionally three, when mom joined) of us to master it.However the game quickly starts shaking things up, adding elements in different combinations that force you to think differently or deal with new requirements and complications. I’ll avoid giving examples in the interest of staying spoiler-free, but I will say that they are often fun and thematic and well-executed, without being too complex for a kid to comprehend.The little wooden pieces for the crew members and the oars are really high quality and fun to move around, and the 3d cardboard ship is a fantastic centerpiece.I have to give special praise to their idea to include Capt’n Pepe himself as a wooden ball that you have to be touching to take your turn, and which you’re encouraged to roll to get it to the next player. It adds this delightful visceral element manifesting the cooperative transition clearly, as well as the ever-present danger that you might sling it off the table or something in the heat of the moment, if you get carried away, and have to scramble to retrieve it while the timer ticks down.There’s a story adventure book that you read sections of as you go along, or you can scan a QR code and play their professionally-recorded version of it (which is well-done). The story works well for familiarizing players with the characters, raising the stakes, and introducing the various gameplay elements. It’s a fairly basic tale, though what bothered me a little bit about it is how it get wax just a little on the verbose side sometimes, considering the target audience especially. Pretty quickly I started summarizing/simplifying as I went along, to avoid dragging out the interludes. I will say that my daughter was very invested in the story, though — it hit its target audience well, in this case.In true legacy game fashion, the new elements that are introduced are unpacked from adorable little treasure chest boxes. Most of them represent cards and pieces that are used as part of the gameplay variations, though there are also a couple stickers that go on the boat.The majority of the stickers come into play as treasure you find (which is pure bling, though my daughter loved choosing between the objects to put in her treasure chest sticker book), and as representations of how far you’ve gone on the jaunty progress-tracking map, and of how well you did on each chapter.At the beginning we always got to put the saber sticker on the map square, representing the highest performance achieved. But as it went along, there got to be some situations that even taxed me somewhat, and with my daughter in play sometimes cost us top marks. You can always go back and play them again later to try and beat your score/get that bonus sticker, which is of course the idea.I really loved seeing her work through the logic puzzle of each round, and adapt to everything the game threw our way. It was a wonderful experience for us, working cooperatively to defeat the wicked forces arrayed against us and retrieve the Seven Treasures.I hope Haba or other publishers produce more games like this, accessible to children but still fun and engaging for all ages. Ever since we completed it, my daughter’s been asking if we can get another legacy game. I mean, adults love the stickers in legacy games, but you can picture how much more awesome it is for a kid who already loves stickers for their own sake.
Robert Gamble –
Fun main mechanic, but didn’t hold my son’s interest
So, I love legacy games and I thought I would try it out on my 6 year old son since he likes pirates. The main mechanic of moving the sailors to different parts of the ship while an hourglass is running, is pretty fun. The idea of picking your rewards is also cool, and at first my son seemed to enjoy it. But he quickly realized that the choice of reward is just cosmetic. I know that things will get more interesting and a few new rules will be added, but for the most part it’s the same thing over and over again at least in the early stages – and that’s as far as we got.As far as the components. They’re good, not great. The ship feels a touch flimsy, the pieces for the pirates are solid enough and everything is in a nice color scheme. But it doesn’t really ‘grab’ your attention like some other games do. The rules are sufficiently detailed to understand how to play pretty quickly, but I admit that I didn’t understand the gameplay loop until after playing the first real scenario (not the tutorial one in the beginning).I think for younger kids, this probably has too much of a ‘setup’ time to hold their interest, also. So they might enjoy the game, but they’re unlikely to want to immediately play the next scenario due to the adult saying, “Umm, ok, gotta open this. Check out what this does…”I might revise the score upwards if my son comes back to it at a later date.
Emee –
The first instruction is to “STOP!”
HABA Capt’n Pepe Treasure Ahoy! – A Create Your Own Adventure Legacy Game for Ages 6+The first thing that you see when opening the box of HABA’s Capt’n Pepe Treasure Ahoy! is a bold red warning on the rule book telling you to STOP! This beautifully made adventure game is designed to be played as a legacy game, with each part building upon the previous one in a series of sessions. In order to have all players working cooperatively, you are advised not to peek at the game components ahead of time. I love how that aspect builds a sense of suspense and piques a child’s desire to return and play the following day. Of course, there is no prohibition against playing more than one session in a day, but my grandchildren have decided to play one day at a time. Unfortunately, that limits my ability to comment on some aspects of the game as I have promised that I would not peek. However, I can share some general info.The goal of the game is for the crew of the ship to work together to find seven treasures before Mrs. Goldtooth and to defeat her in her quest to create evil. There are so many components to this game that will gradually be used. Some are f these are:* 5 color coded wood crew member pieces, five color coded oars, and a Capt’n Pepe piece,* a timer, cards, stickers, a map, a boat, and treasure chest boxes, as well as* a 25 chapter story that ties into the instruction book. There are also QR codes that can be scanned to have the story read to the players.Like most products made by HABA, all of the items are well made, durable and safe to be handled by anyone aged 6 and older. The box also has compartments for storing the items. One of my favorite aspects is that the game is designed for five players, which is important to me as it means that all three children can play along with me and their grandfather. The only drawback that I can see at this point is that the stickers cannot be reused, since there is no reusable page to put them on. Other than that, the manufacturer encourages the game to be replayed and even suggests that you can make changes to it too. Given that, and the children’s excitement, I can recommend this product as being worth its cost.
J. Weber –
what a cool game!
We haven’t played the game yet. Grandma and Gramps took a look at it and decided to save it for over the Christmas holiday, where we usually put together a puzzle with our grandkids. This game is sure to be a hit – it intrigues us right now! The pieces look well made. I’m glad we are first reading the story and understanding how the game is played. We did scan a few of the QR codes and thought the reading of the chapter was great. We like that the game can be played as a family and we can play it for as long or little as we choose. Will be a perfect game to play the week between Christmas and New Year. The last HABA game we got was a big hit, it was also a logic game that we played together. Based on that experience I’m sure this game will be fun for us all to play. There’s quite a few pieces to this game, so I’m glad we will have the time to get everything ready too. This isn’t a game you just open and begin playing.
Jill –
Lots of thought went into this game
-This game is very well put together. Great design.-Great game to build on, it is an awesome adventure. It gives your kids the choice to play the same section over and over again or to move on to the next chapter.-If your kids are old enough to read and comprehend then you shouldn’t have any issues. It says 6+ but I would say more like 10+ if you are letting the kids play alone. The rule book is very extensive. If you scan the QR code then the game has parts that can be read to them which is a nice touch.-I wish when it came to the sticker portion that they were reusable (more like clings than actual stickers), my kids were very interested in playing the game over and over but once you use that portion, I am not sure how you would replay it.