Jake and The Never Land Pirates Who Shook Hook game review

Jake and The Never Land Pirates, Who Shook Hook game is based on the Disney Channel cartoon.  Jake is a young boy pirate with his two cohorts, Izzy and Cubby who go around Never Land looking for treasure.   Their nemesis is Captain Hook, Smee and the Crocodile from the Peter Pan books and movies.

Who Shook Hook has Captain Hook sleeping on a hammock with a dozen pieces of treasure on his stomach.  The goal of the game is to remove the treasure from Captain Hook without him flipping over.  There are four tools that you can remove the treasure with and each tool is determined by where your player lands on the board.  The person who has the most treasure when Captain Hook flips off the hammock is the winner.

When I was set up the game it was challenging for me to put all of the treasure pieces on Hook’s stomach without him flipping over. Once the game was set up I called in my testing crew of children.   On this occasion my testing crew was a 5, 7 and 9 year old.

They were immediately drawn to Hook in the hammock, his treasure and the physical game play.   After each person had a turn it was obvious that the 9 year old found it too easy.  The remaining players enjoyed the game, but found that it was too easy to have Hook fall out of the hammock.

I intervened and placed Hook in the hammock very carefully and then put the treasure on his chest.  After a little bit of finesse (and dare I say), skill it was possible to go for more than a couple of turns.  The younger child stayed with me and we played a couple of games, but by then the middle child had left the room.

The 5 year old is a boy.  Is Who Shook Hook just a boy’s game?  Jake and The Never Land Pirates does have a strong female character, but I can certainly see how boys would like the show much more than girls.  Does that fact carry over to Who Shook Hook too?  I don’t know.

The box says that the game is geared to children 4 and up.  4 seems too young to play the game without someone with higher motor skills putting the game pieces on the hammock.   It does have a narrow age range, but if your kids are 5-7, boys and like Jake and The Never Land Pirates then they’ll like Who Shook Hook.   If not, Who Shook Hook is a decent warm up game to Mouse Trap, which they’ll love when they’re 9 or so.