Strangely this wasn’t the success I was expecting it to be when we bought it for our 4 year old. After his competency with Dobble I assumed a simple fast paced matching game would be easy for family play. The problem is that while preschoolers can make the matches easily, in a mixed ability game adults and older kids are always going to be faster. Nonetheless, it’s a really fun, chaotic kids game and N is reaching for it more as he gets older and faster!

How to play:

The game is simple. In a 2-4 player game everyone is dealt a hand of 7 cards. Players match cards in their hand laying them on the table as they go and add matches to existing table piles as they spot them. There’s no turn taking. You just start matching and drawing new cards to your hand if you can’t go anymore. First to get rid of all their cards wins the round. The result is fast paced chaotic fun.

In the original game you play over 5 rounds and you’re penalised for holding cards when the winner goes out. The scores are tallied at the end of all the rounds and lowest score wins. With N being young when we started we prefered the immediacy of deciding a winner after each round without tallies, but we still played multiple rounds because it was so quick. That said, at 5.5 years old, we have now shifted to the tally system.

If you have kids of the same age (give or take a year) and similar ability there’s nothing stopping them playing from 3 upwards, but as a family game (where mixed ages are genuinely competing against each other) it’s better suited to kids from 5.5/6 upwards so they are as quick as the others.

What we like about this game:

This game is best played with lots of players (with or without an adult) so it becomes super chaotic! The art work is fantastic and N loves the frantic pace and shouting out silly descriptive names as we lay cards down on the way to being the first to “wig out”.

What’s interesting is that this is pretty much the same game as Retro Loonacy (reviewed here) but the restricted number of matching stacks in Loonacy and larger number of cards seems to even the difference between adults and kids so that my son often beats us at that game! However Wig Out is our prefered game because the images are so engaging and the pace is faster.

If you love quick card games then this is definitely worth having in your collection for getting the giggles out without having to think too much. Play it as the supervising adult with a group of preschoolers or take on the challenge of racing against your school age children. It’s most fun when there’s more than two players involved and when ages and abilities are similar, so perfect for when friends come round and want to play a game on their own that’s quick to learn.