Cute ball-shaped fun (20Q Game)

Member Name: crazyminx

Product:	20Q Game
Date:	30/10/08 (248 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great for car journeys, spookily clever

Disadvantages: Annoying phrases move slowly across the screen and delay the game

When I received this I was pleasantly surprised at how cute looking it is - it fits in the palm of your hand and is made from hardwearing, translucent plastic. It comes in red, blue or purple, though if you are ordering it online like I did, you are unlikely to be able to choose the colour (I ended up with purple, which I was pleased about!)

It's very easy to use (it comes with an instruction booklet, even though it's pretty self-explanatory). It follows the same format as real life 20qs - you think of an item, tell the game whether it is animal, vegetable or mineral, and then the game asks you questions. You reply to the questions by pressing 'Yes', 'No', 'Unknown' or 'Sometimes'. There's also an undo button in case you enter the wrong one. The aim is for you to come up with an item so obscure or clever that the game will not be able to guess it - then you win!

It's pretty clever, though not flawless, but then if it was right every single time there'd be no point trying to defeat it! It correctly guessed 'guinea pig' on my first game, then guessed 'personal computer' when I was thinking of laptop, and 'christmas ornament' when I was thinking of a bauble, so it's generally correct or very nearly correct. However, when I thought of an electric fire, it guessed 'bathtub' then 'ironing board' and then gave up! So it is possible to win.

I'd say this is a great toy and a bargain. It'll entertain any ages, but is recommended for ages 8 and up, so if you have very young kids I'd recommend the junior version. It's great fun for car journeys and also good if you want to play a game with your kids but don't have time for a fully fledged board game, or if you're bored and don't have anyone else around to play games with.

You can play it alone with the machine, or you can play it with one or more other people - we have found the best way to do this is for the person who thought up the item to answer all the questions out loud and see if any of the other players can guess correctly before the machine does.

Is it educational? Well, it makes kids think about the material properties of the things they encounter in the world around them, although it probably doesn't teach them much, but at least it's stimulating.

The only flaw is that the game's 'amusing' phrases such as 'I can't make it look too easy' and 'Oh, I see you've picked an easy one' which scroll across the screen in between questions can get annoying after a while and delay the continuation of the game!

20 Q Version 2 (the version I have) is currently available on amazon.co.uk for £7.99, which is a very reasonable price and makes it a nice present or stocking filler for your kids this Christmas. It requires 2x AAA batteries which are included (so you can start playing straight away on Christmas day without spending ages scrabbling around for batteries!)

(updated from my review on amazon.co.uk)

Summary: Fab little toy that all the family will enjoy