Introduce Your Children to Coding with Team Digger
We really enjoy coding-themed games and toys in our house. When our son was little, we actually had several of them - like a fun wooden robot that you actually programmed to move with physical blocks instead of a screen. But it just dawned on me that we haven’t played with that robot (or any coding toys or games at all) for quite a long time. And I think our daughter has almost missed out on them entirely so far!
That’s one reason I was really excited to get Team Digger onto our table, and one of the reasons I was happy to name it our Game of the Month for March as well. Coding games not only prepare little ones for coding itself - they are also wonderful for flexing your cognitive muscles in more general ways. I’m talking about things like planning ahead, visualization, and spatial reasoning - all the types of things I usually talk about when I’m writing about chess!
Disclosure: Team Digger was shared with us by SimplyFun, with no expectation of a featured article. All thoughts and opinions are our own.
The first thing to point out about Team Digger is that the physical build of the board and the components themselves are all great. I really enjoy how the board is built out of a 3x3 grid of solid cardboard that is rearranged every time you play to make a different layout. And my daughter is most certainly a big fan of the dog playing pieces.
Team Digger features a team of dogs that are searching for all 4 of the buried bones in a park. By playing a sequence of cards from your hand, you can move your dog 1 square, 2 squares, turn left, turn right, or dig. There are hidden items scattered all around the board, and only 4 of them are the bones you are looking for. There are also “unwanted” items you can dig up, and you lose the game if you find too many of those.
Team Digger is also a cooperative game, and you probably know full well by now how much we enjoy cooperative games in our house. It’s nice to be able to talk about strategy together, and to be able to help with choosing the right cards to play. And the game also features the ability to trade cards with each other, so that adds a nice touch of forethought and planning.
To make sure your dog digs on the right square (one with an item sitting on it), you need to make sure you visualize where your dog will land after you play your sequence of coding commands. And the simple act of picturing all of that movement in your head before touching your dog is great for little ones’ brains.
And, speaking of educational aspects, each dog also has a little R and L written next to little arrows by the dogs’ feet - which serve as a guide to remind kids about their left and right. My 7-year-old picked up on this without me even mentioning it, which really impressed me a lot. And I have to say it’s very cool how quickly she built her confidence up with turning the dogs the right way.
And even though it’s obviously not a focus of the game, I was also happy that my little one had the opportunity to do a little bit of reading. The cards are pretty simple and they feature pictures on them as well as the terms turn right, turn left, walk, run, or dig. It’s always great for our daughter to get practice and build confidence doing any kind of independent reading - and I thought it was wonderful that she knew what all of these cards said and what they did without my help.
You can play Team Digger with up to 4 players, but I’ve also played several 2 player rounds with just my daughter, and we’ve had a lot of fun together. Actually, the fact that she enjoys playing it with me so much is a big reason we’ve made it the Game of the Month. The first couple of times you play, you can just focus on the mechanics and how the dogs move. But after several playthroughs, we’ve also come up with a few house rules that add a little needed challenge.
Ideas to Make Team Digger More Challenging
The very first thing I noticed when playing Team Digger for the first time was that it was impossible to lose. Okay, technically speaking it’s possible to lose, but on a practical level you can win every single time you play. There is no limit to how many times you can trade cards with teammates, there is no limit to how many times you can reshuffle the discard pile into a new draw stack, and (most importantly) there is a mechanic called “chasing your tail” in the game - where you can use your cards to reveal one of the buried objects.
The only way to lose the game is to dig up all of the “unwanted objects”, so if you simply use your turns “chasing your tail” to reveal the buried objects, and you reshuffle the discard pile whenever you need to, there is no way to lose. Having an easy mode like this is of course great for first playthroughs and for the youngest players. But already with my 7-year-old I could tell that we needed to make some house rules and spice it up.
So here’s how you can spice up Team Digger to add more strategy and challenge:
Reshuffling the discard pile into a new draw deck is no longer free. In order to create a new draw deck, you must pay 2 blue “wanted items” that you’ve already collected. Flip them over to the green side to show that you’ve spent them, and then shuffle the discard pile into a new draw deck. If you run out of cards in the draw deck and you don’t have 2 blue “wanted items” to pay, you lose.
You can still trade with teammates as much as you want, but for each card you trade you must “burn” one card from the draw deck into the discard pile.
You can also be flexible with the number of cards you are allowed to use each turn. What works for us in terms of flow is allowing sequences and commands of 3-7 cards (or up to 10 cards for 2 player games) - with only 1 dig allowed per turn. This means that you can play just 4 “turn” cards to chase your tail, or you can even skip your turn by discarding the minimum 3 cards.
Even with these rule changes, you’re still going to win much more often than you lose. But it’s nice to know in the back of your mind that if you’re wasteful with your cards and your turns, it’s possible to lose the game.
I have to tell you - it was very cute to hear how excited our daughter was when she helped explained to my wife what our new house rules were. I can tell she enjoys playing this game a lot, and I think she’ll be asking to get it out for a long time.
You can now find Team Digger on SimplyFun’s website - and hopefully soon in our store too!
Have you played Team Digger before? Do you have any favorite coding games for kids? Let us know in the comments!
