Exploding Emotions

A really nice family game that is fun for kids and great for tuning into the field of emotions and gaining awareness into kids' emotional world. Fantastic product overall, great parental guidance, lovely graphics, quality materials used.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND!! Fun, relatable and practical. This is an incredible apples to apples style game all about emotions. There’s practical responses to that feeling in the moment

Wow! we just received this game and all my 3.5 & 7 year old were super excited with it. Before we even got to playing my 3.5 year old daughter was going through all the ADORABLY drawn emotion cards asking me what each one was. It was amazing to see her face as she leant all about new emotions she never could express before. Later on, my 7 year old invited over some friends and they all had a super time playing- they all loved the game - to them it was a regular fun game, but I know that they were all getting amazing emotional/ social skills without them even realizing it. Also the quality is amazing! One of the cards got a little wet and was totally fine- wiped right off and looks like new. In the evening, we all sat around picking different emotion cards that we felt and explained why we feel that way. It was really fun and enlightening. For example my 3.5 year old was getting a ride- she felt excited, but my 7 year old felt terrified for her sister (because this daughter gets very scared from anything...) Overall I would totally recommend this game to anyone looking for a fun productive game!

Not bad, but could be better. My son is 12 and is starting to have hormone-driven flashes of anger, frustration, social anxiety, embarrassment, feeling not good enough, ashamed… just allllll the emotions, right? So, by the age of probably 8 I have been prepping him about how puberty is going to mess with his head and make him feel different. We’ve had some meltdowns lately so I thought I’d try this game to build up his coping skills and open communication about his feelings. The pros: -I think this game is useful for people of all ages -The situations are relatable and lean toward producing multiple emotions -Many of the situations could be taken differently by different people or in different contexts (ex. Your dad tells you to go collect some firewood for the Barbeque he is about to make.) -The coping suggestions aren’t bad- I wouldn’t say they’re all winners, but I think most of the cards have at least one or two ideas that would help -At first I didn’t like this, but many of the cards have similar coping suggestions… it seemed lazy to me at first, but after a while I realized that maybe it’s good repetition and reinforcement that you can lean on a few common themes to help in most challenges Cons: -The game play suggestions are designed for groups and there isn’t a direct suggestion for 2 person play. -The primary play method is setup like Apples to Apples, and I think it sounds boring, honestly. - The cards are slippery. They’re nice quality and I know they thought making them slick would help keep them from getting gross and worn out, but the problem is that it makes them hard to hold and this actually directly contributed to my son wanting to do something else. The stack was sliding all over and becoming unwieldy and disorganized. For a kid in early puberty, that little annoyance is enough to frustrate. And frankly, even as an adult, the slippery deck is annoying. Just roll it back a notch. We don’t need sheets of glass here. A little surface texture wouldn’t kill anyone. -The illustrations primarily depict white kids. Like… to a considerable degree. It’s weird. It makes me wonder how no one intervened on that before production and whether someone in charge actually intended to be so racially skewed to the right. I mean white. -I just counted and among the 40 illustrated cards, the breakout is half white kids and the other half is a narrow range of other races, including only 2 cards with black boys, who, frankly still look mixed race. Having 11 cards with white girls and 2 cards with black boys is strangely noticeable when you’re using the set. I feel weird segregating our playing cards and counting like this, trust me. But I feel like it’s feedback that the company should hear and the other parents may want to know about before buying because I feel like the representation is awkwardly and very obviously missing or lacking for some key demographics. —LUCKILY, this leads to my last con (an opportunity for improvement!): the emotions listed could be more diverse too. I think there’s plenty of room to add more emotion cards that are valuable for this type of product. I also think it’s fair to blur the line from strictly emotions (sad, angry) to states of mind (grieving, for example). Often, the human experience creates… packages of emotions, let’s call them. And, while we have language to identify many of the core emotions, some are more evasive but still deserve to be identified and called out, even if it’s more of a state of mind than an emotion, per se (feeling hurt, for example). Many of these package terms are used in adult communication and, I think, deserve a place in emotional education. Some ideas: avoidant, anxious, worried, unsafe, suspicious, in love, in limerance, inspired, energized, controlling, demanding, hurt, ashamed, critical, grateful, merciful, protective, loyal, offended, incredulous, at peace, empowered, creative, imaginative, disgusted, horrified, sickened, inflexible, unflappable, generous, reflective, pensive, astonished, in denial, accepting, admiring, covetous, ambivalent, heated, sentimental, appreciative, determined, grieving, nostalgic, contemplative, competitive, guarded, run down, burned out, encouraged, concerned, humbled, afraid (scared is in there but the distinction is worth mentioning to me) —— basically, my wish is for an expansion pack that elevates the emotional range and makes the racial diversity more diverse.

This was a simple fun game. My kids enjoy as we learn to explore and expressed emotions. My kids are seven and 10 and we’re working through learning how to manage emotions this game really helps put words, feelings and emotions together we get to explore them without being in a triggered state, so that they can learn how to move through them. I highly recommend this for any kids.

I am a middle school Slp and this game is perfect for my students !

This is a good social-emotional tool. My daughter loves to play the games that we make up using the cards, and I think it helps her to better name her emotions and understand the range of positive and negative feelings that events might trigger. I'm pretty sure I saw a typo somewhere in the cards, but I don't remember what it was and it's not a big deal for our purposes.

Love the versatility of this game... my students love to discuss the scenarios! We make up our own games.