Logic Games Teenagers Like: Rush Hour

This game has just about endless replay value, which is great because it's made entirely of plastic and so will exist until the death of the Sun.

Syd discovered Rush Hour at a hands-on museum a few years ago. It was possibly our gateway into ThinkFun games, all of which we're obsessed with...

...and Rush Hour is no different!

Syd, especially, has always been SUPER into logic games, and she's solved every puzzle in the basic deck a couple of times. I actually check this game out from the local university's library and keep it for a couple of months until everyone is done playing with it, then I return it. Inevitably, I remember it again in a couple of years and check it out again and we play it all over again! I feel like this is a good way to get around the gross fact that this game is all plastic, and now I'm realizing that perhaps my great goal in life is to organize a local homeschool library of manipulatives and games so more families can share out their plastic crap instead of everyone buying their own plastic crap.

In our family homeschool, we've always played logic games or done handwork while listening to audiobooks. Syd, especially, absolutely has to multitask if she's going to be able to pay attention, and I think this is a nice way to incorporate some logic and reasoning study into our schoolwork. Logic and reasoning skills are terrific for math and writing!

If your kid, too, gets super obsessed with Rush Hour, reading about the history of its development is interesting and would be a good intro into encouraging them to design their own original game, or a different version of Rush Hour. The game varieties, like Rush Hour Safari or the two-player game, would also probably be high-interest and expand their skill set. 

Even if this game stood entirely alone, I still think it would have decent replay value because the basic card deck is large enough that you probably can't memorize the solutions between games. However, I'm also VERY interested in the expansion decks, and if we actually owned it, I'd be tempted to invest in this hard case that apparently holds a couple of the expansion decks as well as the full game, lets you travel with it (something that Syd would have been VERY up for when she was younger), and can replace entirely the crappy cardboard box that definitely actively tries to fall apart.