Hier
- Selwyn Ward
- 2 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Hier is a light real-time estimating game from AbascusSpiele that can help children to boost their mathematical agility through simple mental arithmetic calculations. The game is designed by Ralf zur Linde, with art by Marek Bláha.
The premise of the game is that the 2-8 players are trying to pair penguins with their closest match. The penguins are on cards numbered 1-100. Players each have their own individual pile of five cards, primarily used for scoring, and all the other cards are smooshed out face down in the centre of the table in reach of all the players. 14 cards are flipped face up and, to begin the game, a further card is flipped. Players are then looking among the 14 face-up cards to find the number closest to that on the card that was just flipped.
Happily this isn't a grabbing game; the cards wouldn't stand up to much play if it was. Rather, players are required to place their palm on the card of their choice, albeit while refraining from obscuring the number on the card. The winner gets to flip the top card of their pile to reveal the next penguin that's looking for its partner, and the first player to exhaust their five-card draw pile wins the game.
This is a simple game but it can become a frenetic scramble. Sometimes there's an immediately obvious pairing because one of the face-up cards has a number that directly follows or precedes the card that's just been flipped but players, children in particular, may have to engage in some nifty mental arithmetic to work out, for example, whether 52 or 61 is closer to 57.
The rules suggest some minor variants but the game lends itself to all sorts of tweaks to extend the requisite mental maths agility. In our plays at Board's Eye View, for example, we've played with the extra challenge for adult players that prime and triangular numbers could not be chosen as pairs. And of course a deck of cards numbered 1-100 can always be readily repurposed to play The Mind...
(Review by Selwyn Ward)