Capture the flag. The game brings back childhood memories of humid summer nights playing with the other neighborhood kids who didn’t have a care in the world. The game would always consist of two teams and some items – the flags – that the teams had to retrieve and return to their home base. There was also freezing and unfreezing of opposing players…and probably some other rules that I no longer remember.
After raising enough funds via Kickstarter, creator Judd King released Capture the Flag Redux. The game is a good example of one of those successful Kickstarter projects that’s now widely available online and at retail.
The Capture the Flag Redux kit runs about $60 and includes everything you need to play the game…except for friends. You’ll need to provide your own friends. There are two teams (green and blue) and items correspond to the team colors. The kit includes a pair of battery-operated orbs (those are what you capture), 16 LED lit bracelets (8 of each color), 8 jail markers (4 of each color to designate a jail area), and 7 territory lights (so you don’t accidently run onto that grumpy old neighbor’s front lawn). The kit also includes instructions as well as a deck of 12 game variation cards that give the traditional capture the flag game a twist.
My first thought, when opening up the Capture the Flag Redux box, was there must be $60 worth of batteries in here. Everything has batteries in it. All of the markers, the bracelets and the orbs are all battery powered. It’s also high quality…especially for a game you’re going to throw out in your uncut backyard next to the lawn darts.
Now, I haven’t actually played the game with a group of people. I watched this video of kids playing the game…so I’m pretty sure I have a feel for how it would look. I have a 4 and a 6 year old and they’ve not completely grasped that games have rules that need to be followed. Plus, the light-up bracelets are made of hard plastic and are a little too big for my kids’ wrists. I’m sure that we could jerry-rig something, since the bracelets are really to show who’s on what team and probably keep folks visible.
Since the game is made to be played with larger groups of people, I can see this being popular with big families or neighborhood get-togethers. Scouting troops and the like would probably get a lot of use out of the game. Basically, anywhere that there's a large number of people who want to have fun.
It’s too often that you see things rebranded or rebooted that folks have no use for, no interest in, or still liked the original anyway. I don’t think that’s the case with Capture the Flag Redux. I think they’ve made a classic game better…and that’s difficult to accomplish.
You can pick one up at the following:
Capturetheflagredux.com: $60.00
Amazon.com: $63.90
