Features:

  • Trusted by Families Worldwide - With over 50 million sold, ThinkFun is the world's leader in brain and logic games.
  • Develops critical skills – Playing through the challenges builds engineering, reasoning and planning skills and provides a great stealth learning experience for young players.
  • What you get – Roller Coaster Challenge is 50% logic game, 50% roller coaster building set, and 100% awesome and educational. It's one of the best gifts you can buy for boys and girls age 6 and up, and includes a game board, 36 posts, 39 tracks, one roller coaster car and forty mind challenging cards with solutions.
  • Clear instructions – Easy to learn with a clear, high quality instruction manual. You can start playing immediately!
  • Comes with multi-level challenges - Roller Coaster Challenge comes with 40 beginner to expert challenges that become increasingly difficult as you play through them.
Great game for future engineers or architects

We purchased this game for our five-year son, even though the recommended age is 6+. After opening it up Christmas Day, he couldn't wait to play with it. He and I sat down together and went through the instructions as to how everything works and what each symbol stands for on the example cards. He slowly began to understand the symbolism and was eager to get started. The cards the game provides show you how to BEGIN to set up each rollercoaster, but don't show it completed. That's where the child's logic needs to kick in. Each puzzle card gives you the exact number of pieces that you need to complete each coaster design, and it's up to the "designer" to figure out where the rest of the pieces go to complete the rollercoaster and make it function. The cards start off from easy and progress to very difficult. With practice, and a bit of my assistance, my five-year old was starting to complete the puzzles. Now, he's even getting the advanced/harder coaster designs without much help from anyone. All in all, this is a great game for getting kids to think in three dimensions. The intent is to take a two-dimensional "plan" and building a 3-D working model. The reward is being able to take the little rollercoaster car and send it down the track to the finish line. I would definitely recommend this game to children who are interested in architecture and/or engineering, or who like to build things with their hands. Absolutely outstanding toy!

Perfect gift for the child who loves to build

Purchased this gift for my son who loves to build things. He gives this toy 1,000 stars and throughly enjoys creating each challenge. For those reviews that stated instructions were difficult to follow, I’m here to tell you my son has no problem. I went over the first couple builds with him and he has been building independently since. He loves this toy.

A fun puzzle

Nice game to keep my kids occupied. My kids are younger than the age on the box but they loved the idea of following instructions on card and use their brains. make various designs and then let the small roller coaster slide down. they use it as a marble run as well. The benefit of this product compare to basic marble run for toddlers is the problem solving part and to teach kids how to visualize the puzzle on paper and translate it into something really fun.

Awesome Roller Coaster Builder

They must have fixed the issues with the pieces being hard to snap in and the coaster not staying on the track that the other reviewers are writing about, because it only takes a second or two for an adult to snap things together and with the exception of the few tracks that use the magenta pieces the coaster stays on the track. I will say that snapping in the pieces is probably challenging for most 6 and 7 year olds, and so trying to do this completely independently would probably be fairly frustrating for them. The logic used in this game is very light. I read the short instruction guide and fiddled around with the track pieces for a couple of minutes so I could fully understand the mechanics of how the track pieces worked and then explained how many spots over and how many posts down each track piece went to my 5 year old. After a few minutes of showing her the mechanics of the game she was able to figure out which piece would be used next and exactly where it needed to go with each step of the puzzle with just a moment or two of thought. Even though it is not really a logic challenge I do still highly recommend this product because I really like how it makes her think about the track placement, that the game demonstrates how the steepness of a descent affects the speed of the coaster, and that she can easily design tracks of her own as long as I snap the pieces together and place things where she wants them.

Great game for 6 or 7+

Great Game. We were a kickstarter backer and bought here to give as an additional gift to someone. This is a great game for 6 or 7 plus. The three dimensional puzzle thinking is fantastic. It takes a little bit to get used to, but after about an hour - the kids are off and going and having a blast.

Great toy for kids who love to build

My 6 year old son got this for Christmas. I was looking for something other than the traditional LEGO building system. He loves to build and use his imagination. This is absolutely perfect and he loves it! The quality is great and the directions for each track are very easy to understand. Santa for the win.

Has been something we keep coming back to

I would have never ordered this myself if it were advertised to me, but my son (6 yrs old) received it via the Amazon STEM subscription. We were both not to excited about it up it's arrival (around the end of December 2019) - But once he built the 1st puzzle, we were hooked. He asks to work on these challenges at least 2 times a week - which is not typical for him. He nearly never asks to do anything outright besides have a snack or play on the switch. We are near the last of the Medium Level challenges. He always seems to feel accomplished after every puzzle/build and asks me to send videos of his coaster operating to relatives. I think this is a great way to get your child engaged in facing challenges and feeling capable in building/problem solving. This has been one of the most productive toy experiences we have had! The product does have small pieces and I would recommend keeping out of the reach of small children - more to avoid loosing pieces ( you'll need all of them to complete some of the challenges ) than choking. I would only get this out if you feel up for making sure everything ends up put up at the end. Luckily, most of the pieces are bright in color and can be spotted readily, but others are dark blue, reds, and blacks. The pieces are sturdy and I never feel like my son, who can be rough on things, is at risk of doing much damage or breaking anything.

First STEM Monthly package that I'm excited about.

My 5 year old loves to build and figure things out. She is very hands on, and enjoys a challenge that will make her think, but is also fun. We received this as part of the monthly STEM package through Amazon. The first few items were great for a single use or so, but left a lot to be desired. We just used the Coaster Challenge for the first time today and my daughter was thrilled, she continuously asked for more cards to try and complete, and did not want to stop using this set! The big question will be if she comes back and requests it again later, but so far I am VERY pleased and so is she. For her, I think it's a great difficulty level, but she really enjoys math and problem solving. Rather than just letting her randomly guess which pieces solve the problem, I challenger her to think out which pieces she has, and the spaces that she needs to connect. Also, when figuring out the gaps you need to connect, there is simple math involved, which is helpful to reinforce what she's currently learning in Kindergarten.

Fantastic game for both boys AND GIRLS!!!

This was the first STEM game that arrived when I subscribed to the monthly membership for kids. When it arrived I was skeptical. You could imagine my surprise when my 5 year old daughter not only enjoyed the game but became more and more excited as the game progressed. This game is addictive. I would suggest being close by when the game starts and do the first few levels, then when they get the hang of it just sit back and help out when they get frustrated. The instructions are not super clear but you should eventually figure it out as you work through the cards. The game really helps with eye hand coordination and spatial reasoning! So glad we got this game!

So much fun for all ages and nothing like I was expecting, much better

We received this thru our Amazon STEM toy subscription. I put off taking it out of the box because I thought it was going to be another one of those marble coaster style toys. It was not, at all. The game comes with 40 cards in 4 difficulty levels. Each card shows a start and end point and a list of pieces that must be used to make the track. The object is to figure out how to connect the start and finish using all of the pieces shown on the card. There is even a loop piece of track and AMAZINGLY the car goes around the loop every time with NO problems!! I have NEVER used anything with a loop that actually worked. Me and my 2 children, ages 6 & 14, all played this and had a blast. After they went to bed I continued to play with it for another hour LOL!

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