Looking for a fun, all ages family game? TAPES! is a fun measuring guessing game that is fun and accessible for the whole family!

TAPES! is a game for 2-4 players, ages 6 and up, and takes about 15-30 minutes to play. 

TAPES! is published by Hog Wild and is available to purchase for under $30.

The pencils and paper goods are pretty standard fare, but the real magic of TAPES! is in the utility box and measuring tapes. The Tapes are high quality flexible measuring tapes like you’d find in the stash of any sewist, and the utility box does triple duty as game component storage (yes, everything fits inside nicely!), clipboard for the scoresheet, and spinner for the game mode and measuring units. The utility box is heavy duty and snaps closed tightly, making TAPES! a great travel game that secures all of the components. (We first played TAPES! while camping and it is a great camping trip game).

The goal of TAPES! is to correctly guess the dimension of the chosen objects to score the most points!

Setup just takes a few seconds! Remove the components from the Utility Box, hand out a scratch paper and pencil to each player, and jot each player’s name down on the scoresheet. To decide the first player, all players spin the wheel and the player with the smallest unit of measure goes first. Settle ties by playing Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Gameplay is really simple, which is why TAPES! is such a great all-ages family game.

The first player spins the wheel on the utility box to determine the challenge effect for the first guess. There are five possible challenge effects–TAPES, Double Points, Triple Points, Blind Guess, and Close Up. The first three are fairly self-explanatory, players are vying for normal, double, or triple points, respectively. For Blind Guess, once the player picks the object to be measured, all players must look away from the object and cannot look at it until after they have recorded their guess. For Close Up, players can get as up close and personal with the object to be measured as they want.

The player then picks an object (within sight of all players) and a dimension (length, width, or height are the most common but feel free to get advanced and choose something like circumference or diameter) and spins the wheel again to decide the unit of measure. All players then secretly write their guess down on one of the scratch sheets of paper. Once everyone has finished writing down their guesses, all guesses are revealed and the player who chose the object measures the object with the corresponding tape measure to get the actual measurement.

The player who guessed the closest gets 5 points, second closest gets 3 points, and third closest gets 2 points (doubling or tripling these if one of those challenge effects was in place). If two players were the same number of units away but one is over and one is under, the player who was under gets the higher tier of points. If multiple players have the same guess and would score points, they all get the same points for their tier. Lastly, if a player guesses the EXACT measurement, they get 5 bonus points.

The game ends after the fourth round. The total points for each player are tallied up, and the player with the most points wins! If there is a tie for winner, a Sudden Death round is played. The tied players play Rock, Paper, Scissors and the winner picks an object and dimension while the loser spins for a dimension. Both players guess the measurement and whomever was closest wins the game.

TAPES! is a great, quick, fun, all-ages game that is perfect for at home or travel. Our kids especially love trying to guess the dimensions of objects in the silliest things like gummy bears and chicken eggs, and we’ve played the game half a dozen times in the week since we cracked it open on our camping trip. The replayability increases exponentially if you take it to different rooms and locations as well, while players build an intuition of exactly how big a large pizza or honeybee is for measuring various items. 

I also want to reiterate how much I love that everything fits into the utility box in a neat and compact way AND a quick version of the rules is printed right inside the box in case you need a reminder or for quick reference while playing.

You can purchase TAPES! on Amazon now!

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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.

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Jonathan H. Liu, Patricia Volmer, Sophie Brown

David Michael, Gerry Tolbert, Andrew Smith, Ray Wehrs, Joel Becker, Scott Gaeta, Beth Kee, Joey Mills, talkie_tim, Danny Marquardt, Adam Bruski, John Bain, Bill Moore, Adam Frank, Lacey Hays, Peter Morson, James Needham, Matt Fleming, Adam Anderson, Jim Reynolds, Seiler Hagan, Bryan Wade, Petrov Neutrino, Jay Shapiro

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