Memoett

With “Memoett,” the Viennese game publisher Piatnik presents a special memory game for little explorers ages four and up. Instead of matching pairs, the goal here is to find an entire animal family—and in the correct order, too. Two game variations ensure long-lasting fun.

Twelve animal families—from polar bears, wolves, and flamingos to seahorses—have lost track of each other and want to be reunited. In the simpler game variant, all cards featuring exactly one animal are first selected and distributed among the players in turn. The remaining tiles are shuffled well and laid face down in a 6x6 grid. On their turn, a player flips over any card. If it shows an animal that matches one of your own families—and also has the correct number (!) of birds, fish, and other animals on it (namely, in ascending order from one to four)—you may place it on the corresponding pile and immediately take another turn. If that’s not the case, turn the card back over and it’s the next person’s turn. The first player to complete all their animal families wins and ends the game.

Things get even trickier in the second variant. Here, too, the goal is to find all four tiles of a genus in the correct order and stack them on top of each other. However, there’s no initial distribution of tiles, so all the tiles are laid out in a slightly larger grid at the start of each round. Following the motto “First one, then two, then three, then four—then the stack is mine,” players take turns trying their luck. Whoever finds the fourth and final animal in a family gets to claim the entire collection. Once all the families are reunited, the player with the most stacks in front of them wins.

This colourful challenge playfully promotes memory, concentration, and observational skills. Each tile in the animal quartet’s memory game variant also features charming little details for young explorers to discover.