Review: Health Nut

Health Nut is an educational game that comes from parents Zara & Leo the designers who saw that their children were looking the basics of health education up on google. This 1-4 player game is focused on play based learning for kids 9-13. In Health Nut kids will learn about different aspects of health including nutrition and different parts of the body and how they function.

The Health Nut board is a grid of pathways (Think tic-tac-toe grid with an outside boarder) that each player can traverse.The goal of the game is to make it from your starting spot (each player starts in a different corner of the board) to the opposite corner of the board and have the most points. The points and moving through the game take a very far backseat to the richness of the facts.

During your turn you move one space and take the action on the space if there is one. Some spaces are blanks. After you take the action (typically drawing a card and reading it aloud) then its the next players turn. There are some spaces that give you points just by reading the card aloud to the rest of the players like "Crazy But True"and "Well Done!". There are also spaces like "Health Issue" where you will read the card aloud but you will loose one point. Lastly there are spaces that contain an activity for you to do. These are "Time For Fun", "Question", and "Creativity". These spaces will keep your children's attention while playing the game as a lot of the game otherwise is reading facts off.

Health Nut makes learning about health fun!

There is one more aspect to the game that is very interactive for the people playing. There are four puzzle spaces on the board. Each player may visit one per game. When you are on any space next to the puzzle space (These are the 4 corners of the tic-tac-toe board) you can take your move onto the puzzle space and then you get to do the puzzle. The puzzles are matching cards together like body parts with their descriptions or food with the vitamins that they are associated with.

...the game is simple enough that it will not bog down the younger kids and engaging enough that the older kids will want to finish the game and play again.

All in all the game is simple enough that it will not bog down the younger kids and engaging enough that the older kids will want to finish the game and play again. This is a great game to play as a family and have a great chat about health and science. The box also includes a coloring sheet and a large magnetic Vitamin Guide that you can put on your refrigerator to continue the conversation after the game is over.

Health Nut is a fact dense game that will make learning health with you younglings more fun. This is way better than flash cards to get these interesting facts embedded in your kids head. Chances are you are going to learn something too as an adult. The game also includes a coloring sheet and a vitamin guide magnet to display on your fridge (unless you have a weird non magnetic stainless steel fridge like us).

Players: 1-4

Year Published: 2022

Recommended Ages: 9+ (Intended Audience Kids 9-13)

Time to Play: 25-45 minutes

A review copy of Health Nut was provided to Bert's Tabletop Games for review purposes by the Health Nut team.