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Domino Bugs – A New Dominoes Game

This post is part of the I Love Games Series.  Be sure to check out the rest of the series. 

 Domino-bugs-cover

A little while ago, I made the mistake of letting my children play with our set of dominoes.  They wanted to stack them, knock them down, etc.  Unfortunately, they misplaced a lot of them.  So now we have a little bit more than a half set of double 12 dominoes.  We are still looking for the missing dominoes but I didn’t just want to toss the remaining dominoes.  I came up with this game which works great with a not complete set of dominoes.  I just have to make sure I have enough dominoes that match each other before we start.  

 Domino Bugs is kind of like a cross between go fish and cooties.  Once my children got the hang of it they loved this domino game, especially the older two (8 and 5).  Ry (3) enjoyed it too but she only wanted to play it for a short time and Jet didn’t even make it through one game, of course he’s 2, so I didn’t expect much.  

Domino Bugs

For 2 to 4 players, Age 3+

Need: Double Six or Double Twelve Set of Dominoes

Setup:  Separate all the doubles out of the dominoes (If you are using double twelves you may only want to use half of the dominoes). Let each player select a double to start, this will be the body of the bug. Place the rest of the dominoes face down in the center of the table.

Object of the game:  The object of the game is to get four legs for the bug by matching dominoes by number to the double bug body.

How to Play:  On each turn a player may choose to pick or trade.  If they don’t have anything to trade, they must pick.  

To pick, a player turn over 2 dominoes and then they can play them on their body if they match, keep them to trade later if they match another player’s body, or discard them back into the draw pile.  

To trade, a player trades a domino that matches another body for one that matches his own from another player.  A person can not reject a trade or discard a domino after they have chosen to keep it.  However, you can choose to discard a domino instead of keeping to trade when you first draw it even if it matches another players.  

Play moves in a circle until someone has collected four legs for his bug.  

domino-bugs-trade

Here you can see my son has stashed a domino to trade with his sister who has the double four.  If she were to draw a domino with a blank and keep it, he could then trade it on his next turn.   

domino-bugs-in-progress

Here is the game in progress.  As you can see both players have 2 legs and the player with the double six has a domino saved to trade with the double four player. 

domino-bugs-winner 

And finally here is winning the game.  The bug now has four legs and the game is over!  

If you want an extra challenge, you can play with a full double 12 set and make each player get six legs.  Also you can have more players if you play with a double 12 set.  

domino-bugs-kids-playing

Have you played any new games with your children lately?  

If you enjoyed this game be sure and check out more of the I Love Game Series.  

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Happy Playing!

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Lisa

Tuesday 14th of January 2014

This is SUPER cute!! Great idea!

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Britni

Friday 25th of October 2013

Oh I love games and love creating new ones. Definitely pinning this for future reference when my little guy is old enough to play.

Britni @ Play. Party. Pin.

Lucy

Friday 25th of October 2013

Thanks Britni! I love making up games too.