Juxtabo, Anaxi, & Spirot: Creative Games to Keep Your Kids’ Brains Engaged This Summer

If you’ve been around Play Eat Grow very long, you know that our family LOVES, loves, LoVeS playing games. So when Funnybone Toys reached out to the Play Eat Grow team, I was overjoyed when they asked if I would like to try out 3 of their newest games: Juxtabo, Spirot, and Anaxi. Why yes! Of course I would!

Juxtabo

Juxtabo is a game for kids and adults ages 8+. The goal is to create patterns out of the circles to match the cards in your hand. The trick? With each turn, the board changes. Each circle is double-sided, so players can stack the circles, colors facing one another, to change whatever pattern is on top. While a simple design, the game is more challenging than it sounds!

When playing, we really enjoyed the strategy needed to manipulate the pieces to do what we wanted. Sometimes it would take a bit of finagling to get us there. Other times we would accidentally create a pattern that matched what the other person needed.  We also loved the high quality and durability of the pieces, and the colors are gorgeous! After we were finished, the younger girls had a fun time sorting and stacking all the pieces :).

Spirot (pronounced “spirit”)

This art sequencing game reminds me a little bit of the game Set, but with a bit more strategy. The goal of the game is to find sequences of images that have colors and pexels being all alike or all different. However, unlike Set, players can place an image from their hand onto the game board on each turn, in hopes of creating a set. The first person who makes 5 sets wins. Here’s a video with more detail:

The kids are super fans of Set, so I think because of its similarity, they weren’t as impressed by this game. The difference in pixels weren’t always totally obvious to them, causing a bit of frustration. We did like how the game board was always evolving– it added some spice to the game!

Ananxi

Last but not least, Ananxi is a word game that we all LOVED. It was our absolute favorite of the bunch. Play started out with placing 3 circle cards- one red, one blue, and one yellow on the base card. Players then had 1 minute to think of words that fit into the overlapping circles.

For example, in this set-up, in the 1s column on my pad of paper, I would write down anything I could think of that was both dry and cold (ex. dry ice). In the 2s column, I would write down an object that was cold and round (ex. hail). In the 3 column, I would write down something that is dry and round (a log, a coaster, a rock). Finally, in the 4s column, I would write down something that is dry AND cold AND round (whew! that one is hard!). After the timer is up, everyone goes around and shares what their ideas. Players get points for unique answers.

Here’s a video:

Our kids have a great vocabulary and a fun imagination, so they were full of ideas. While playing with younger players, I’d recommend playing without the timer to take off some of the pressure. Also, we had fun making this a cooperative game but just seeing how many we could come up with as a family. What a great way to engage in creative and critical thinking while having fun as a family!

To see other Funnybone Toy reviews, check out Christina’s review of the Rolli Stamps or MaryAnn’s review of Arrazzles! And don’t forget to visit them on Facebook to learn more about their other creative games.