The Happy Puzzle Company Games Review

The Happy Puzzle Company Games Review | AD

In our family, we are big fans of educational toys that challenge your mind while being fun at the same time so I’m very pleased that we’ve now discovered The Happy Puzzle Company.

The Happy Puzzle Company specialises in educational games, toys and puzzles for families and schools. The company is working with over 13,000 schools in the UK and have specialist experience helping children with dyslexia and dyspraxia as well has supporting talented children who need greater challenges.

The business has been going for over 29 years and they have a range of over 300 award-winning puzzles, games, challenges, and puzzle books to enjoy, including lots of games and puzzles that are unique to The Happy Puzzle Company. The wide range of products includes so many fun products – there’s really something for everyone!

We’ve tested a couple of games/puzzles from the Happy Puzzle branded range which we are going to have a closer look at in this article.

• The Genius Square by The Happy Puzzle Company

This game has quickly become a family favourite! The Genius Square can be played on your own or with an opponent and has a whopping 62,208 possible puzzles which is amazing!

The game consists of two Genius Square grids with a set of nine colourful wooden shapes and seven blocker pieces each. To get started, you roll the seven dice that are included with the game and place a blocker on each of the seven co-ordinates that appear on the dice. Next, race against your opponent or yourself to fill every space on the grid with the nine colourful shapes.

The dice can fall into 62,208 possible combinations which creates the same number of challenges. A computer program has confirmed that there is at least one possible solution to each challenge. Some are easier, some are more difficult, and some have several solutions.

The Genius Square is a great game for our whole family with children aged 4, 6 and 9 who all enjoy playing it on their own, with each other or with us parents. The kids have lots of experience playing with IQ puzzles from a young age so they love this puzzle! The game is recommended from 6 to adults and encourages the following skills: Sequencing, Spatial Awareness, Speed Of Thought, Strategic Planning and Visual Perception.

My husband is really into IQ puzzles and has already found different ways to challenge himself using this game. He challenged himself to see if he could build a 3D cube as you can see in this photo. He also swapped some of the smaller pieces to larger pieces with the same number of total squares) from the other set to make it more challenging for him to fill his board too which was fun!

• DropZone by The Happy Puzzle Company

Our kids are really into marble runs – especially our youngest – so the game DropZone was a natural choice for us. It’s a reverse logic construction puzzle that you can play on your own or against an opponent.

The game has 100 multi-level challenges, and your task is to connect a series of bridges, towers, and ramps across up to three levels to ensure that your marble reaches the correct destination for each starting point.

You get 2 DropZone bases included in the box with 6 coloured wells for each base in the colours: gold, maroon, purple, green, teal and orange. For each player, you also get 2 grey ramps, 4 white towers, 5 black bridges and 1 marble. The game includes 100 multi-level challenge cards and two special dice.

The challenge levels are Beginners, Medium, Hard and Fiendish. The Beginners level uses fewer pieces while the other levels use all the pieces and are always three levels high and require the players to race against each other to create pathways that connect the top of the tower to the colour shown on the card. If the marble falls into the correct coloured well for all the towers, then you have solved the challenge correctly.

On the back of each challenge card, there is a clue that provides directions on how to place the pieces to complete the first level to get you started if you are stuck. If you are playing with an opponent, the dice decide whether you’re allowed to make use of a clue or not.

This game is recommended from age 8 to adult and encourages the following skills: Logical Deduction, Sequencing, Spatial Awareness.

While The Genius Square game is super quick and easy to get into, this game takes a bit more time and effort to learn and my youngest two are too little to play the game properly for now. My eldest is getting quite into it and plays it on her own or with us parents sometimes. All the kids love using the parts to create their own mini marble runs too!

It’s great to have these two games in our family game collection and we will definitely head to The Happy Puzzle Company the next time we are looking to add an educational and challenging game to our collection.

Collaboration. These games were provided for this review. As always, all my reviews are 100% honest and all thoughts and opinions are my own.