Genius Games Covalence: A Molecule Building Game

We are a geeky family, but we are not heavy gamers. We do enjoy family games and other not overly heavy board games. We also homeschool our children. I say this to give you a little context for this review. I am a sucker for cooperative games. So I decided Covalence would be a great fit for our family. I wasn't wrong. The instructions could use a little tweaking to make them more clear. But overall this isn't a super complicated game. It has a fun logic game feel to it. While the theme is very educational, I think the game is fun and the learning is a bit sneaky (meaning kids and adults will learn without even realizing because they are having fun.) The quality is also nice. In short, we will be adding many more Genius games to our collection. *Update* we now own Subatomic, Periodic, Cytosis, Covalence, Ion, and Peptide. We have not been disappointed. In fact we plan to continue adding most Genius Games to our collection.

This is a fun game for the kids right about the time they are taking junior high science and it will still be vastly useful through college chemistry courses. An entertaining and educational game.

Fun family game. I like that it is a cooperative effort rather than playing against each other. You don't have to know chemistry. One suggestion for the game maker- put the Level rules on a card that the players can have in front of them during the game. I mean the rules about Easy level molecules will only be CCC, or CCN or CCO, and Hard level molecules will be... whatever the rules are - I cannot remember. But it is essential information that they keep buried in the middle of the instruction book - not in plain view to the players. That's my only suggestion. It is a good game of problem solving as a group, and you can choose what level of difficulty to play. Thumbs up.

My wife is pursuing an engineering degree and really enjoyed taking gen chem. We picked this game up to help her practice the names and structures of various molecules. It's a fun game, and you don't need to be a science geek to enjoy it.

This game is less fun than it sounds. I thought there would be a wider variety of elements to make up different molecules and I thought they would be kid-focused molecules like NACL, H20, H2SO4 and the ones which we memorized in high school. Instead most of these are in the ethyl and methyl groups and we had to keep wikipedia open to learn about each molecule because none of that information was included on the cards. In all honesty, this game needs Covalence2 where more elements and molecules are introduced, explanations of the molecules are made more fun.

We received this as a gift. My husband is a PhD level chemist. We played it with 2 family members that have a lot of experience in chemistry and biology. The directions are way too complicated for kids and rather unclear. The game was not enjoyable and didn't seem to be well conceived. I don't have a chemistry background and the game made little sense to me. After one attempt at playing the easiest and quickest version we will be giving this away.

Lovely little puzzle game with a good amount of challenge and accuracy to its theme.

I bought this game as my middle school children are learning chemistry this year. I needed a game to reinforce how molecules are built and this fit the bill. The game only takes a few mimutes to learn and young and old can play. There is an easy, medium, and hard setting. There is also a chemist expansion which seems to take it to a whole new level of game play. Only rudimentary levels of molecule building are needed and much of this information is in the rule book. I recommend beginning with the easy level to get an idea of how to play before moving on. The game has one "Knower" or clue giver and up to three "Builders". Builders can be individual players or a team of players which is great for pairing an adult with a small child. The came is "cooperative" in the sense everyone shares up to 8 "clue" tokens and 7 "guess" tokens. You get different amount of "clue" and "guess" tokens depending on what level of play and number of "builders". Builders each receive Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, and Hydrogen tiles to use to build the molecules, as well as three cards of Molecules they will need to build with the clues the Knower gives. The "Knower" gets Number Cards and Organic Clue cards to use to give clues to each builder. The object of the game is to have all Builders build their molecules before all the "Clue" and "Guess" tokens are used up. We played a few games first without the clue and guess tokens to get a feel of the game before we really played. We found it engaging and informative and it brought up some bond questions that we will need to dig into as they go beyond the game. We played as a family, husband, wife, an 8th grader in public school, and a 7th grader who is homeschooled. We all loved it and have plans to play again regularly. I would definitely recommend this game to anyone but esepecially to those who have children learning about molecules in any capacity.