It’s pretty tough to find a game that’s fun for a four-year-old and his forty-two year old dad, but Chicken Cha Cha Cha fits the bill perfectly.

The game was designed by Klaus Zoch and is published by Rio Grande Games. Chicken Cha Cha Cha has won numerous international awards, including the 1998 Kinderspiel des Jahres, the 1999 Vuoden Lastenpeli, and the 1999 Childrens Game of the Year in Denmark. Its original recipe combines a simple memory game mechanic in a race format with quality components.

The game comes with 24 egg-shaped image pairs that match a set of 12 green-backed octogons. The eggs are placed facing with the image up and form the track around which you travel with your beautifully carved wooden chicken, trying to collect tail-feathers from your opponents. Inside the track, the octogons are turned over and scrambled, providing the “chicken yard” where you must find a match for the egg that lies in front of your wooden chicken.

My family has had a lot of fun with this game. The memory aspect is challenging enough for everyone and the quality of the components is extremely high. The game doesn’t take very long to play, maybe ten minutes, so you’ve got time to play a few games in a session. The images on the eggs are very cute, and we’ve already developed some great names for a few of them, like pooping chicken, soft-boiled egg, and the sandwich worm.

If you’ve got young children and you’re sick of Candyland, I highly recommend Chicken Cha Cha Cha.