This year’s Christmas cards feature penguins! More specifically, penguins racing around a track, collecting fish and trying to meet.

This game has echoes of Snakes & Ladders, and so will be familiar to many of the recipients. Roll a die, move that number of spaces, and either celebrate climbing a ladder or groan at sliding down a snake. However, this card adds a couple of choices into the mix: firstly you may choose which direction you move (clockwise or anti-clockwise), and secondly you may move either of your two penguin counters. Yes, that’s right — each player has two penguin counters!

The overall result in a game with many familiar components, which is easy to play — but also new and different. Greetings card games are not supposed to be complex or difficult, and so this mixture of old and new is perfect.

It was also the first time I used an insert! Usually my cards ask for players to find their own counters. This one needed each player to have two identical penguin counters, and so I printed them on business cards and snuck them inside the cards.

Penguin Pairs will be coming to AireCon, so you can pick up copies there!