Just 4 Fun isn’t the most popular game, despite being a Spiel des Jahres finalist. From description, it sounds terribly inane. The name is horrible to start with. Four-in-a-row, with cards determining where you can play — can it be any more drab? But guess what, it’s a surprisingly good game anyway.

Nothing special, that’s for sure, but I still had fun with it. It has lots of maths, you need to do lots of sums in your head and well, I found that surprisingly entertaining. You do have some choices, deciding what is the best way to use one’s cards to succeed and prevent others from succeeding. It’s quick, too.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m selling my copy as soon as someone buys it. Still, it was a pleasant enough distraction. We played it twice in a row with Johanna, even though she didn’t enjoy the counting much. This would be an excellent teaching tool for mathematics classes, you have to do lots of sums in your head while you play…

I think it’s a bit bland for being a SdJ finalist — last year had lots of better titles to choose from — but when it comes to very simple family games, it’s not a bad choice.