Pretzel Games | Men at Work | Family Game | Ages 8+ | 30-45 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

In Men at Work you are attempting to construct a building by adding different coloured wooden girders to the base structure. Construction halts – if you run out of building materials, or the last worker gets placed, the game ends and the worker with the most combined safety certificate and Employee of the Month awards wins. The surest footholds are usually closer to the table, while girders grow more skewampus with every inch of elevation, often in ways that aren’t immediately apparent because Men at Work doesn’t usually soar all that high.

I've talked previously about the “finger feel” of game pieces and this one hits the nail on the head (….

The safety certificates, crane and cleanup hook are all cardboard but seem to be sturdy enough to hold up. This probably isn’t something you would guess about me, but I can be a bit snobbish about stacking games. Eventually, you’ll reach a point where you’re forced to attempt the Employee of the Month award or fall behind. Having to do two bricks, one on each shoulder, is just an automatic loss for whoever has to do it whenever we play.

The construction cards get shuffled and the boss card, Rita, gets put in the deck about a quarter of the way down. Men at Work is an absolute blast, and one of the only games my group begs me to bring week after week. We can't even get them to sit on one shoulder with the worker standing just on the table, let alone while sitting on girder and trying to move it one handed.

If they cause an accident during clean up, they will also give up a safety certificate and miss their go. Again, these might seem minor but really change the base game and can increase the replay value as well. In either case, I usually have lots of fun with them, even if I don’t win which happens more times than not. The end of the game is triggered by one of three conditions: Every player except one has lost all of their safety certificates, one player reaches the required amount of Worker of the Month awards (between 3 and 5 depending on the number of players), or if construction halts (all workers are on site or you run out of building materials). Pretzel Games has a knack for producing quality dexterity games, I love that Plan B has branched out into this market with their label.