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W Christensen –
Fun and unique game!
We played this several times as a family (my youngest child is six, and my oldest is 15), and everyone had fun. This is totally unlike any games that we own. I knew my ten-year-old especially would love it, and she does. The instructions were too confusing for my kids, so I read through them and played it with them the first time, and they have played by themselves since then. The game play isn’t complicated, but it is definitely unique, so I would suggest playing it multiple times with your kids, and then they should be fine to play by themselves. I am not a huge fan of physically challenging games myself, but this is short enough that I had fun playing. My other family members played more than one game in a row. My husband especially got into it, which is always fun. The flotsam pieces are made from wood. The other pieces are a sturdy cardboard. I am always worried about cardboard pieces because they inevitably get ruined, but these seem pretty sturdy. You create six mountains by fitting three pieces together for each one. These are intended to be left assembled once you do this. The instructions even explicitly say they will fit in the box assembled. My ten-year-old wanted to take them apart after playing the first time because she said putting them together was a lot of fun. I let her do this that one time, but since then I have insisted the mountains stay assembled after we play. If your kids take these apart and put them together multiple times, the cardboard will definitely get weak and they will get ruined. There are no plastic bags included or a plastic insert in which to keep all the pieces, so everything is just rattling around in the box together. This doesn’t seem safe or very organized, so I just put the different pieces in ziploc bags. The game box is nice and sturdy. This is a big plus for me. We have plenty of games in weaker boxes that have now broken. This one should last for a long time. I am really impressed with the brand of games. I had never before heard of Haba, but this is a quality game that is well thought out and a lot of fun.
GallantChaos –
Simple and fun, but younger players will struggle.
I enjoyed this game quite a bit. The concept was simple enough: Stack your selected piece on the raft without knocking off any others, and successfully move the raft to the next island without dropping any pieces. Execution proved difficult, however, even for older players.We had some family over to play this game properly. Players aged 6, 8, 11, 15, and 29. Our youngest player really struggled to move the island successfully, being still a little shaky on fine motor control. Despite encouragement from others, play ended with him in tears unfortunately, as he didn’t feel he was competitive with his siblings and cousins. I would recommend younger players practice other stacking and fine motor games before playing this, and that the youngest player is immediately after the adult in play, so the adult can lose some pieces to make play easier on the younger players. I would also recommend that you spend some one-on-one time with younger players to practice.When It came time to put the game away, I was surprised to see that the pieces took up less than half the box. This means that the box is massively oversized, and will take up an unfortunate amount of space on the shelf. The box also shipped containing sealed plastic bags instead of resealable ones, and there was no nondestructive method to open the card bags. If everything was put back in the box without the containers, then there would be a royal mess the next time the game was unpacked. While this can be resolved with some rubber bands and a sandwich bag, It would have been better for storage to be included in the box. For the oversized game box and lack of storage options, I have to dock one star.If your players enjoy stacking games, I would recommend this game without hesitation.
Bradley Nelson –
Fun dexterity game
This is a fun dexterity game, piling up items on rafts and hoping they don’t fall. There is some movement that can be precarious. It’s fun for the 8-10yo age range, but also for adults. But adults do have a big advantage in this game.
Lone Mountain –
Excellent Kids Stacking Game with Stack-moving Mechanic and a Fun Theme!
HABA games are always excellent. They’ve really mastered what it takes to create an appealing and challenging children’s game. As always, the game includes high quality components, painted brightly with colors for kids. My 8 yr old son grabbed this out of the Amazon box before I even knew it had arrived and started playing with it.Because the game comes with a bunch of components and no organizer, I recommend grabbing some Ziploc bags to keep all the components organized while packed away and for the next time you play. Otherwise, the moment the kids pull games down from the shelf and Flotsam Float falls, those components will scatter across your floor like spilt M&Ms, or you’ll just be annoyed that everything’s a giant mess in the box when you just want a quick game.The gameplay is simple, but challenges dexterity and balances both strategy and random chance. It’s not a game that adults would pull out an play together, but it’s truly a family game. Kids have a fighting chance to beat the grown-ups. The instructions even come with optional, advanced rules that make the game a little more interesting the more times it’s played.It would be nice for HABA to have included a quick reference guide to remember what to do in the two cases that balanced flotsam can fall.Check out Animal Upon Animal (a HABA classic) or Meeple Circus for a similar stacking-style game.LIKES— High quality, colorful components— Full-color, well organized, and easy to follow instructions— Great fun for kids and parents alike— Optional, advanced rules— Dexterity mechanicDISLIKES— No Organizer— No Quick Reference Guide
Lanugo –
Well designed and fun to play
This is a simple but entertaining concept: players take turns at moving the raft island to island, stacking a new object on top each time. You score no point when something falls down and a few when nothing does. Repeat until no objects are left to be picked up.The game is implemented pretty well. The cardboard islands are sturdy enough to bear the weight of the raft loaded with wooden flotsam and fit back in the box fully assembled; the various cards are thin plastic but they do their job; the flotsam pieces themselves are nice and chunky. The ruleset is simple to learn and so far we’ve only run into 1 instance that wasn’t covered by it.All in all, this is a good game, fun for the whole family, simple to set up, simple to pick up and with a fair amount of replay potential. I’m knocking a star off because of the price (around $40 at this time) — most board games of similar complexity tend to be around $10 less, which is not insignificant as far as games go. I guess the additional cost is somewhat justified by the need to have wooden pieces (plastic is too light and wouldn’t work) but still, it’s something to keep in mind.
Jodi Kariott –
Cute stacking game for kids
Nice stacking game for the kids fun to play easy to learn made very well would make a great gift
Janos –
Delightful family game that builds fine motor skills, strategy, and cooperation
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We played many HABA games with our kids over the years. We could always count on the game’s quality and amount of fun. Flotsam Float lives up to the HABA tradition.The game’s mix of cooperative and competitive elements makes it fun for both kids and adults. It also features some optional rules to mix things up after you played it 20 or 30 times. The “flotsam” pieces are painted wood, so they’ll last a log time. The islands and raft are thick cardboard, which should also last well.Play begins by setting up several “islands” on the table. You’ll need some open table space for this game because the islands can’t be right next to each other. Each player takes a turn adding a new piece of “flotsam” to the raft, moving the raft to a new island, and collecting a card for points if nothing fell off the raft.If the stack gets higher than two pieces, anyone who makes it grow higher and successfully moves it to another island collects a bonus point card. The player with the most points at the end wins – or you can just play for fun and see how high the raft gets.It’s great for learning cause and effect, interpersonal cooperation, basic physics (how to hook the pieces together and balance for stability), and fine motor skills. Highly recommended for anyone with kids in the 4-7 age range. (And parents, it also makes a fun drinking game for after the kids go to bed.)
G. Hartley –
Clever, fun game, but overlarge and poorly organized box
Haba is one of my favorites. They manage to create games that kids can easily understand but that adults also won’t mind playing. Flotsam Float is no exception. Essentially, players stack wooden blocks on small towers, then move the stack from tower to tower, earning points if blocks stay in place and losing points if they fall off. (There’s plenty more to the rules, but I won’t go into that here.) It’s a non-linguistic dexterity game with a colorful island theme that should appeal to just about anyone.The components are well-made and designed. Typical sturdy cardboard for the towers, card stock for the cards, and nice painted wood for the pieces. My box says it was made in Germany.However, the box itself is shockingly large to hold what amounts to some cardboard and two small bags of wood blocks. Furthermore, there is no system to bundle the cards together to keep them from becoming a chaotic mess while in storage. A couple of ziplocs solves the problem, but for the price, a tray would have worked wonders, or–for LESS expense–just make the box smaller!
Pedro G –
If your kid loves dexterity games, it’s wonderful.
Let me start by saying I love Haba games, they are a lot of fun to play with my kids. So when I saw I could have a chance to check out this new game I did not hesitate.Dexterity games are not my thing personally but kids love them. And this one makes it extremely accessible to many skill levels. The raft, where you balance the pieces on, is a good size and the pieces are chunky and easily manipulated by any sized hand.My only problem with the game are few and don’t impact gameplay. The instructions on how the game ends is kind of confusing and it took me some rereads of the instructions to understand- and I’m not 100% certain I understood. And storage is also an issue. The pieces came in a single use plastic bag instead of something reusable. For a company with quality pieces- the organization just doesn’t seem to synergies.Overall though, other than those two minor gripes the game is a lot of fun for children and should keep them entertained and laughing with friends and families as they play.