Hedgehog Roll Wins 2020 Kinderspiel des Jahres

Hedgehog Roll from designer Urtis Šulinskas and publisher Piatnik has won the 2020 Kinderspiel des Jahres, Germany's game of the year award for children's games.

In the game, which goes by the title Speedy Roll in its German edition and which originated from Russian publisher Lifestyle Boardgames, players race one another down paths in the forest to reach a house first. You can advance on a path only by picking up the right items that you need to move — and you pick up items by rolling yourself (in fact, a tennis ball with stuck-on eyes) across a field of mushrooms, apples, and leaves that have hook-and-loop patches on their backsides. Pick up a leaf and apple when you roll, and you can then move to a leaf space, followed by an apple space or vice versa. Pick up too many things, however, and you don't move at all.

Image by Geert Vanbellinghen

You can adjust the layout of paths to make the game longer or shorter, and the game also includes a co-operative version in which everyone moves a single hedgehog that must reach the house before being eaten by a fox.

Hedgehog Roll was also nominated for the 2020 As d'Or in the category of children's games. You can watch two complete games of Hedgehog Roll, along with a playing of the KidJ-nominated Wir sind die Roboter from Reinhard Staupe and NSV and an overview of Michael Kallauch's KidJ-nominated Foto Fish from LOGIS in this special episode of GameNight! Who correctly guessed the 2020 Kinderspiel des Jahres winner?!