The Chronic Consumer

In an effort to get my son to spend less time playing video games, I’ve been trying to get him interested in board games instead. I had a bit of success with stuff like Chutes & Ladders and Candyland, but he’s bored with those now. So I recently purchased Stay Alive to expand the collection a little bit.

The object of Stay Alive is to push and pull various levers across the board to get your opponents’ marbles to fall while leaving your own intact. It’s for 2-4 players, and the game is both easy to explain and easy to pick up. We were playing in no time!

I bought the travel-sized version because I figured it would be easier to handle than the full-sized one — and because it will take less time to finish a game. It’s a 5×5 board, and each row has either one or two layers that the marble must pass through before dropping off the board.

Gameplay is pretty straightforward. Each player takes a turn at sliding one of the levers, with the goal being to get the other players’ marbles to drop. The only real rule is that players must move a different lever from the one the player before them moved. This is just to prevent a stalemate, with players sliding the same lever back and forth to negate each other’s move.

Overall, Stay Alive is a pretty fun family game. We’ve played it quite a few times already, and after two months, everyone is still interested in the game. Hopefully the interest will keep up for a while longer! Anyway, at $9.95, this was definitely a decent purchase!