Perpetual Geek Machine might be the place where big kids come to play, but even the biggest of kids can have little ones running around in their living room. If those little ones are your own kids (as opposed to an army of midgets/cats/robot badgers), you’ll no doubt be looking for a great way to bring them into your gaming world. Regardless of their age, Shake ‘n Take should easily get those kids unplugged from the TV and parked right at your kitchen table.

Supporting 2 to 10 players, Shake ‘n Take might just be the perfect 20 minute distraction for a group of rowdy 8 year olds at a birthday party. The game starts with one player acting as the “Alien Hunter” and another who shakes the “Shaker Egg.” The Alien Hunter has a die with different shapes on each side and a magic marker, and both players have a card in front of them with different-shaped aliens.

While the Alien Hunter tries to circle all of the aliens with the shape on the die he rolled, the other player keeps shaking the Shaker Egg until an alien lands face up on the die inside. When this happens, the Shaker grabs the shape die and marker and passes the Shaker Egg to the player on the right, and the cycle begins anew. The first person to circle every alien on their card wins.

While it may offer up a cute rhyme scheme, the title Shake ‘n Take really sums up the play experience nicely. Shake the Shaker Egg until you can take the Alien Hunter’s gear. This game couldn’t have a more literal title if it was called “Box full of markers, dice, and cards.”

While there aren’t too many pieces included in the box, what you’ll find in there is all of good quality. The cards, for instance, are made of a plastic material that makes it easy to wipe the marker off after each game. The game also comes with durable whiteboard erasers (branded with the game’s logo), as well as removable rubber alien grips for the markers, which should make it easy to replace the markers and keep the grips once the ink inevitably runs out.

But is it fun? For the most part (and so long as you’re playing with kids) I’d give this a resounding yes. The “hunt for shapes” aspect reminded me a lot of Pictureka, but Shake ‘n Take’s object hunting is much easier. The challenge comes not in finding the objects (shape recognition is something most of us had mastered before kindergarten) but in finding them in the allotted time. This brings up to Shake ‘n Take’s greatest strength, which manages to double as its biggest weakness: the Shaker Egg.

With only one alien on the die inside the Shaker Egg, you’d assume that every player would easily spend 10 or 15 seconds shaking before finally getting things alien side up. As any craps player will tell you though, sometimes the dice just do what you want them to. And since it only takes a fraction of a second to shake the die inside, most turns in Shake ‘n Take never last more than 5 seconds. Sometimes they’ll last less than one. Since the player with the Shaker Egg can start shaking the moment the Alien Hunter rolls their die, it’s entirely possible (and a regular occurrence) that you’ll have to give up the marker and shape die before you even get to put the marker’s felt tip to the card.

If you find this as annoying as I have, the problem can be remedied with a little mental duct tape by creating a few slight rules variations of your own. For example, you could set it so that the player with the Shaker Egg needs to count to 5 before shaking, or that shaking doesn’t start until the first alien is circled. My favourite twist we put on the game was having the player use both Shaker Eggs (a second Egg and pen are included for when you’re playing in larger numbers) and requiring two aliens to appear before taking the pen and die from the Hunter.

The box suggests the recommended age as 8+, but this is a game that can easily be embraced by younger players. My 6 year old daughter and I had a blast playing this, and she had no problem grasping the gameplay concepts right out of the box. In fact, if it wasn’t for the “take” element of Shake ‘n Take, I’d go so far as to say this game could skew even younger. With a few simple off-the-cuff rules variations (make it a solo game, just use the shape die) my 4 year old managed to have just as much fun with Shake ‘n Take as the rest of us.

Shake ‘n Take is a quick game – some might argue too quick. Being able to wrap up a game in under 10 minutes is a good thing, but having the dry erase marker ripped from your hands only seconds after rolling the die can really get frustrating after a time. Look past that one quibble, though, there’s a good deal of fun to be had with Shake ‘n Take – especially if you’re playing with kids.