Cluckle Kids Table Review

The Kids Table series from Purple Phoenix Games seeks to lightly explore games that are focused toward children and families. We will do our best to give some good insight, but not bog your down with the millions of rules… I was recently at the Dig & Find in town, perusing the random wares, when I came across some games! Obviously, I had to pick them up, and the first of these, Cluckle, is perfect for a Kids Table review.

Cluckle is a real-time game in which players are racing to create words of various lengths in order to win the round. To setup for a game, place the Chicken and die in the center of the table. Create a ‘nest’ of Egg tiles around the Chicken, making sure to keep them all face down. Each player receives a ‘wild’ Egg tile, and then takes 7 additional face-down Egg tiles from the nest. Choose a starting player, and the game is ready to begin!

To play a round, the starting player will take the Chicken and push it down onto the die – the bottom of the Chicken has a small cut-out area to grip the die. Raise the Chicken, give it a squeeze, and the die pops out! Once the die has come to a stop, the starting player calls out the number and the game is on. Players will then all turn their Egg tiles face-up, and attempt to create a word with their tiles. Here’s the catch: you must create one word that is exactly the same number of letters as the number shown on the die. The first player to complete a word shouts it out and grabs the Chicken from the center of the table. If the word is real and spelled correctly, that player wins the round.

The winning word is placed off to the side of the player, so as to keep track of ‘score.’ The winning player replenishes their Egg tiles from the Nest, and all other players have the chance to swap Egg tiles between their play area and the Nest before the next round begins. All players then flip their Egg tiles face-down once more, the role of starting player rotates to the next person, and a new round begins. The first player to make 6 words (win 6 rounds) is the winner!

So all in all, a pretty simple game of making words. Think kind of like Bananagrams, but only a single word at a time. The theme is cute, the concept is solid, and the gameplay is great for kids! I played this with Travis, his wife, and his 6-year-old son and it was better than I was anticipating. Why? Because it’s a fun way to get Travis’s son to work on his spelling and word creation! Yeah, it’s not a game I’m going to pull out for a group of adults, but for a group of younger gamers, it’s a great way to get them working on something ‘educational’ while having fun. The highest possible letter-count of a word in the game is 5 letters, so it’s not anything overly complicated for kids to be able to accomplish. And there’s a literal rubber Chicken involved? Chalk that up to a hilarious win for your baby chicks.

To touch on components for a moment, they’re mostly fine. The Egg tiles, die, and Chicken are pretty decent quality. My only qualm is with the die-rolling technique you’re supposed to use. The bottom of the Chicken has little grips that hold the die – you push the Chicken down onto the die, pick up the Chicken, and voila! The die is held in the bottom of the Chicken. In reality, the die doesn’t stay very well in the Chicken. You either have to push really hard down on the die to get it to stay in, or you just need to be fast about squeezing the Chicken or else the die just falls right out. In theory, it’s a funny way to roll the die. But in actual execution, it’s mostly a letdown.

Would I recommend Cluckle for families? Overall, I would say yes. It’s a cute and fun way to get the kiddos involved in games, while giving them the chance to put their brains to the test. At a certain age I think the novelty will wear off. But if you think your younger gamers would be into this game now, I’d say give it a shot! If anything, it’s a good way to get kids working on spelling without having it feel like homework.