Finding a board game that works for a 5, a 9, and a 13-year-old simultaneously is one of those things that sounds easier than it is. You’d think with so many games out there, the overlap would be obvious. It isn’t. The 5-year-old needs something visual, character-driven, low-stakes. The 9-year-old wants to win, properly, with rules that feel real. The 13-year-old will play, but she’ll let you know — subtly — if she’s bored. There’s a particular kind of patience teenagers perform when they’re humouring you, and you learn to spot it fast.
We were gifted the All 4 Won! Disney Edition a few weeks ago. It’s made by Drumond Park, distributed by Tomy, and sits at £12.99 at Smyths. I want to say I went in with high expectations, but honestly I didn’t. The box is cheerful. Mickey and Olaf are everywhere. My first thought was that this would be one for the two youngest, and the eldest would drift off after a couple of rounds to look at her phone.
She didn’t.
The game comes with 128 small playing pieces in four colours, a centre pillar, four coloured trays, 32 double-sided character cards, and a golden Mickey trophy that is, I’ll admit, a better bit of plastic than you’d expect at this price point. The 32 characters cover Disney and Pixar, Mickey and Friends, Olaf, Dumbo, Rex from Toy Story among them, and the box packs four different game modes in. That’s the actual sell. Four different ways to play means the mechanic shifts before anyone gets tired of it.
The modes are built around spotting, grabbing, memory, and speed. You’re racing to match characters, to remember where things are, to get your hands in first. My youngest, who’s five, got the absolute most out of spotting familiar faces, she’d shout “Olaf!” with the kind of urgency usually reserved for fire drills. My nine-year-old, who is deeply invested in being the one who wins things, loved the competitive edge of the faster rounds. There were a couple of goes where all three of them were leaning so far over the table I thought someone was going to end up in the pieces.
Setup takes maybe three minutes, four if you’re reorganising between modes, and the instructions are clear enough that we didn’t need to look at them again after the first game. That matters more than it gets credit for. Nothing kills a family game night faster than ten minutes of squinting at a rulebook while a five-year-old starts pulling the components apart to see what they feel like.
At £12.99, it’s easy to dismiss as a stocking filler and move on. I’ve paid four times that for games that got played twice. This one has had three outings this week, and it won’t replace a long, complex game for an older audience, it’s quick and light, built for short rounds rather than a big sit-down. But for a mixed-age family evening where you need everyone actually present and playing rather than just tolerating each other’s company, it lands in a way that very few games at this price manage.
The youngest asked to play it again this morning, before breakfast.
All 4 Won! Disney Edition was gifted to us for the purposes of this review. All opinions are my own. Available at Smyths Toys for £12.99.
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