Zingo Game Review

Zingo is a variant of Bingo (with a zing!). Zingo involves matching an image and word on a tile with a number of images on the zingo card. Image and vocabulary recognition, matching, memory, concentration, and social interaction are the skills promised to be improved. On most of these points Zingo is successful.

The zingo cards have images like a foot, cat, bat, and a cake in a 3 x 3 grid. The game comes with 8 double sided cards. There are two levels of play (red and green), one on each side of card. The "zinger" is a pre-loaded tile dispenser that is slid forward to reveal two tiles at a time. The first to call out the word on the desired tile gets to place that tile on their card, when the card is filled with tiles the game ends. One positive aspect of this game is that on each tile there is a picture of an object and the printed word, this helps associate the word with the picture for early readers. I also like the fact that all of the pieces fit into a fairly small box neatly and can be pretty portable. The length of time to play a full game is fairly short, 5-10 minutes. One unfavorable aspect of the game is that after you've played it a few times there is not a lot more to learn, and the amount of variation between games is low. The two game levels have more to do with how often the players are fighting to get the same pieces so this increases social difficulty rather than added game play difficulty. Reloading the zinger is also not a very fun process for kids, although it only takes a couple of minutes to complete.

To summarize, Zingo is a good game, especially for 3-5 year olds. The manufacturer's age recommendation is 4-8, but I think that kids beyond 6 will find the game boring. To deal with the wearisome aspects of the game when played too often, I recommend you play the game some, then put it away for awhile so it feels fresh again when you bring it back out. Considering the low price ($10-$11 range), it is definitely worth it to add it to your game closet.

Zingo at amazon.com

Zingo at ebay.com