Covalence: A Molecule Building Game

We are a geeky family, but we are not heavy gamers. We do enjoy family games and other not overly heavy board games. We also homeschool our children. I say this to give you a little context for this review.I am a sucker for cooperative games. So I decided Covalence would be a great fit for our family. I wasn't wrong. The instructions could use a little tweaking to make them more clear. But overall this isn't a super complicated game. It has a fun logic game feel to it. While the theme is very educational, I think the game is fun and the learning is a bit sneaky (meaning kids and adults will learn without even realizing because they are having fun.) The quality is also nice.In short, we will be adding many more Genius games to our collection.*Update* we now own Subatomic, Periodic, Cytosis, Covalence, Ion, and Peptide. We have not been disappointed. In fact we plan to continue adding most Genius Games to our collection.

I will start by saying we are a game playing family. We love board games, all types. We bought Ion, an ionic game by the same manufacturer and decided to try this one to work on covalent bonding concepts.This is a cooperative type game where one person has to give hints to the other players in order to direct them on how to make their molecule. It is a very difficult game. You have to be excellent at giving clues and the players have to be great at understanding exactly what you meant by the vague clues. I bought this to use with my high school chemistry students and it was beyond them.Perhaps a group of chemistry loving adults who like cooperative games would enjoy this. Other than that, I can't really recommend it. If you are looking for a chemistry themed game that is easy and enjoy, try Ion by the same manufacturer. It is much more enjoyable and has a much better game play.

Fun family game. I like that it is a cooperative effort rather than playing against each other. You don't have to know chemistry. One suggestion for the game maker- put the Level rules on a card that the players can have in front of them during the game. I mean the rules about Easy level molecules will only be CCC, or CCN or CCO, and Hard level molecules will be... whatever the rules are - I cannot remember. But it is essential information that they keep buried in the middle of the instruction book - not in plain view to the players. That's my only suggestion. It is a good game of problem solving as a group, and you can choose what level of difficulty to play. Thumbs up.

We bought this game for our daughter who is in college (majoring in chemistry). She and her friends all enjoy board games and are happy to add this to their collection. We played it with them so I got some first hand experience. It was fun, and very cooperative - everyone is working together to solve the molecule puzzles. It has several different levels so the more advanced can increase the challenge if they want to. We played the first level which was just as fun for those in college actually studying chemistry as it was for parents who took chemistry many years ago. A good game for families, friend groups, educational purposes, good fun. :)

I enjoy this game as a person who loves cooperative games. I love the scientific theme. It probably isn't the top choice in my gaming groups, but we did all enjoy it. The only major fix we had for it is a greater variety of molecules to be built. Maybe an expansion will come along later?

This game is less fun than it sounds. I thought there would be a wider variety of elements to make up different molecules and I thought they would be kid-focused molecules like NACL, H20, H2SO4 and the ones which we memorized in high school. Instead most of these are in the ethyl and methyl groups and we had to keep wikipedia open to learn about each molecule because none of that information was included on the cards. In all honesty, this game needs Covalence2 where more elements and molecules are introduced, explanations of the molecules are made more fun.

A fun game, suited for helping people who need alternative study methods. Kind of wish it included more molecules but for a beginner's guide not bad. I would also say the game has a more leisurely pace to it, possibly because it is supposed to be educational but that's not a bad thing.

A little tricky because elements dintbline up just like the cards show... confusion ensued. Once you know it's not going to be exact, it's ok. Except it's science and it's "off."