Are you looking to combine world geography with a bit of history? Then Take Off! may be just the game you’re looking for.
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Take Off! is a game we got used, for free. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I’d be willing to pay more than a couple of dollars for it. I think it used to be a great game, but it’s so outdated that it’s just…not.
Take Off! has a huge map
Take Off!’s map is a huge Mercator projection laminated roll-up thing. It’s four feet long and almost two feet wide! And of course, because it’s supposed to be stored rolled up, it never lays flat, so you have to clamp it down or put really heavy objects on the ends. And the planes are so light, if you’re at all ineffective at securing your map, they’re going to go flying.
This game is for 2-6 players. Every player is supposed to have four airplanes. (Because we got ours used, it was missing some pieces, so I painted some of our planes so we could each have four planes.) There are also two eight-sided dice included, and of course, the country cards. I might actually try this game with our The World country cards, but the map is still terrible (outdated and a horrible projection).
Tons of statistics!
Although, the cards do have quite a bit of information on them, more even than The World. The map on each card has where the country is located (with the surrounding countries pictured). They also include the country’s independence date, languages, ethnicity, religions, currency, climate, and land characteristics. On the other side is the flag, area, population, life expectancy, literacy rate, per capita GDP (Gross Domestic Production), and a couple of interesting factoids. So this really is a lot of information, if only it weren’t over 30 years out of date!
We may need to give this game one more shot…
I’ll be honest – we’ve only tried to play this game once, when my kids were much younger. It was a frustrating and very long attempt, and I don’t think we even got our planes halfway across the map. I’ve kept it, though, because it’s easy to store. We have a number of other game boards and tabletop role-playing game mats rolled up, so this one is just in the mix. The rest of the pieces fit nicely in a relatively small bag I made for them.
Maybe we’ll try again, now that my kids are older.
