Gulo Gulo
2-6
5+
30
Gulo junior was caught by the lady vulture while attempting to steal one of her eggs and has now been arrested. There is only one thing left to do: get the family together and search for the little bugger, but they cannot resist passing a nest without stealing an egg. Whoever jumps the furthest, and gets to Gulo junior first can win the game.
User Reviews (2)
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I had heard good things about this game while scouring the net for good games for small children, but struck out trying to find a copy for some time. I stumbled upon it at a comic book store during a 50% off board game sale, and am very pleased that I did so.
Gulo Gulo is primarily a dexterity based game. The box contains several heavy cardboard hexes with colorful pictures of wolverines with different color eggs, about three dozen wooden eggs of various sizes and colors, a wooden concave nest, a wooden stick with an egg on the end and 5 different colored wolverines. Everything contained appears to be good quality.
You build a face-down path of hexes in any shape you desire that lead to a stack at the end. The stack contains several standard hexes and one hex with a baby wolverine pictured with a bunch of colored eggs. As you turn up the hexes and reveal the colored egg on the other side, you attempt to fish out the colored depicted on that hex from the nest. Also in the nest, however, is the stick mentioned before. If a player knocks an egg out of the nest while attempting to get the one they need, or cause the stick to hit the table, then that player needs to go back to the previous hex with that color depicted, or back to the beginning if that is not possible.
If there are exposed hexes in front of you (revealed by other players or because you got sent back) you can try to take that color egg and skip the colors between, so it is easy to get back into the game if you get sent back. Once you get to the stack, you start revealing the hexes one by one and adding to the path until you find Gulo Junior, at which point you try and take one of the two purple eggs from the nest to win. A game will take in the neighborhood of half an hour or so to play.
So, the gameplay isn’t particularly deep, and there is certainly some randomness and luck involved both when hoping your needed egg is easily accessible, and also when Gulo Junior will show up. There is a little bit of risk/reward involved when trying to skip back up on the path when knocked back depending how buried the egg you want is in the nest, but not that much. I cannot really recommend this game for a group of adults by themselves because of this. It is rather simplistic compared to other dexterity based games such as Space Pirate or Catacombs.
However, in my opinion, it excels as a game to play with the wee ones, and is a great way to get them to play games with you that are not Candy Land. In my case, I have a three and a half year old daughter, and she had no difficulty picking up on the rules. More importantly, she asks to play it again immediately after the game is over, right after her nap, when she wakes up in the morning… you get the picture.
In closing, I very much enjoy this game. Not because it challenges my intellect or my egg-stealing skills, but because it does pose a challenge to my daughter, and not one that turns her off to the game. I expect the true value of this type of game will be realized in another 10 years when because of the foundation that this type of game builds she will gladly play a couple of hours of Mage Knight or a quick game of Quarriors or the like. I get to spend time with her, and not with her eyes glued to the TV in the meantime.
If you have a small child, and you see this game, I strongly recommend you pick it up. You won’t hate it, and your kids will love it.
Gulo Gulo is a fascinating little kids game that you might find intensely nerve-wracking and fun. Kids even younger than 5 should probably have no problem playing this game, because it’s really simple and they only have to know their colors.
PROS:
Solid and great components overall
Little eggs give kids with little fingers an advantage over fat-fingered adults
CONS:
Not a deep game at all
Not in print and expensive now
Gameplay
The premise is quite simple. The players play the role of wolverines (gulos) trying to find their kid brother who was captured by the vulture. However, they can’t resist stealing the vulture eggs which are tasty treats for them while on the hunt. Each player takes a turn flipping colored tiles over and trying to remove the same colored egg from the dish full of eggs without tripping the alarm or dropping the egg. If you successfully retrieve the egg, you advance to the tile you flipped over unless another of the same color is before it. If you trip the alarm, the eggs are reset in the dish and you go backwards to a tile of the same color or the beginning. The goal of each player is to be the first one to find the junior tile and retrieve the purple egg that represents the junior tile. There is only one purple tile in this case. The rest of the colors are blue, yellow, red, and those evil tiny green eggs!
Conclusion
Gulo Gulo is a nice way to pass the time with younger children in the family who can’t read. My youngest really loves it, and she is quite good at getting those little green eggs out of the dish. I find the game pretty intense when quite few eggs have been removed, and there are very few eggs holding the alarm inside it. One false move and — KAPOW! — it comes tumbling down. It makes for a few good laughs and groans. This is a good family game for young ones.