Imaginative Play with Osmo.

Disclaimer: this post was sponsored by Osmo but all opinions are 100% my own.

** SPECIAL PROMO - starting today, #NationalPizzaDay, February 9, 2018 until February 24, 2018, Osmo is offering a 30% off discount on the Pizza Co. Game on their website! Learn more about the game below (or on their site), and then... what are you waiting for? Come be a "pizza" the fun! Get your Osmo Pizza Co. Game here!

While I am about to review Osmo's Pizza Co. game for you today, I have been singing Osmo's praises LONG before we were ever given this game to review. Mason was gifted Osmo's Genius Kit for his birthday by Seth's mom and has been obsessed ever since. The Genius Kit comes with the iPad base, the Tangram game, the Numbers game, and the Words game. If I had to put them in order of like for Mason, I'd say Tangrams is his favorite followed by Numbers and then Words, but he really does play them almost equally. I won't go in to too much detail about these games today, but I will say, CHECK THEM OUT. While you do need the iPad to play these games, I feel good about his iPad time as I know he is learning when he's playing them.

(Sorry about some of the dark photos. Mason insisted on playing it the night we got it and I wanted to try to snap some photos on "Day 1" and the light was not the best....)

 The Pizza Co. game is new to us as we've only had it for about a week, but I kid you not when I say that Mason asks to play it EVERYday. Yesterday morning I woke up with him at my bedside, asking me to take the cover off the iPad so he could play. He loves it!

The Pizza Co. game starts on Day 1 with you opening your own pizza shop. We've been playing for a few days now, so I can't remember exactly how it starts out, if you have some money already or not, but every day you get a delivery of toppings for you to be able to make the pizzas for your customers. There are different levels and we're currently on the easiest (the age range is 5-12 for this game and since Mason is 5, I started us on the easiest level), but the gist of the game is that your shop opens in the morning, you get walk in customers who ask for specific types of pizza, they eat, they pay, and they leave... hopefully happy. I say hopefully because obviously that would be the goal, but Mason is a little slow sometimes, so we have a range of happy, neutral, and sad customers. We even have some that leave angry because he takes so long, but hey, I guess that's real life, right?

To walk you through a day... First, you get a delivery of toppings and then your store can open. The door bell rings and your customer enters. A little screen pops up telling you what kind of pizza they want. It can range from:
- a picture of a bell pepper, a fish, and a pineapple (gross but true)
- a picture of a happy face by an olive and a sad face by a fish (means he likes olives, but dislikes fish)
- a picture of a design (an olive in the middle with pineapples all around to make a "sunflower" or a happy face with pepperoni eyes, an olive nose, and a pineapple smile)
- a picture saying they want 1/2 of their pizza with mushrooms, the other 1/2 cheese
- a picture saying 'I want tons of toppings'
- etc.

At the top of the screen where it tells you what the customer wants, there is a little timer that counts down. It wants you to make the pizza quickly, before the timer runs out, and push it in to the oven. While Mason is still learning, the timer runs out often, which I think is why most of his customers leave unhappy or neutral (unless Seth or I help and speed it up). As time goes on and he gets to understanding what needs to happen better, I'm sure most of his customers will leave happy again.

You, as the pizza owner, see what they want and make their pizza with the toppings that you have. Here is where we had a small problem gauging how many toppings to put on the pizza since the characters don't speak English, but instead say things like "magoo". I have no clue what that means, so we kind of gauged how many they want based on previous situations and by reading their facial expressions.

After you make their pizza, you push it in the oven to bake, it pops out, they eat, and then they want to pay. You flip the pizza over to the other side and you are able to help them pay. The customer basically tells you how much they owe. Sometimes they pay in exact change and sometimes you need to give them change. Say they owe $6, but they give you a $10. It will show that they owe $6, and then it will show the $10 they placed on the counter. At the bottom of the screen, it shows 10 "bars" with 6 filled in and 4 empty. If you can count them, you know they need $4 back. If you take too long to start giving back change, a box pops up saying $10-$6 and you can calculate $4. If you still don't start giving back the change, then it shows the answer of $4 and shows two $2 bills that you need to give back. I love this because it really caters to all levels of math skills of the kids. This is where Mason has more of a problem because while he does know some addition, he's not so quick with the subtraction. Seth and I help him a lot here.

At the end of the day, after you're done helping all your customers, your store closes and you find out how much money you made. It breaks it down to show you how much income you made - how much you paid for ingredients - the ingredient delivery fee + your tips = your profit for that day. I love that it does that because it really shows you that if you owned your own shop, you would make money, but you'd also have to spend money.

It also lets you know how happy or sad your customers were.

They also break it down in to goals. Your goals after just a few days of being open are very different than after you've been open for a week or so. In the beginning, your goal could be to save $100 in the bank and serve 10 happy customers. Then as time goes on and you achieve those goals, your new goals could be things like use 100 ingredients or buy a new oven for the shop, etc. I love that it not only break down how much you earned and spent, but also gives you goals as a business owner as well.

Want to learn more? Check out this short little YouTube video that gives you a little more information about the Pizza Co. game.

While I do think that this game is age appropriate for a 5 year old, it was a little hard for Mason to do on his own. I'm not sure if it's because he has autism and is a little slow to catch on sometimes or if we just haven't played long enough, but we had the level on the easiest which means there are only walk-in customers, no phone calls, and we had it set to a "calm" day versus a busy day. We also had it set to dollar bills change only instead of coin change, but I found that the subtraction was a little hard for him, so Seth or I had to tell him how much change to give and what denominations to give (for example, the change is $3 and we'd have to tell him to hand back a $1 and a $2).

Overall, I would highly recommend this game and any other Osmo game for kids ages 5-12. I know my niece, who is seven, has it and loves it as well. While the Pizza Co. game is definitely not one, for us, that Mason could play alone at this time, the Tangrams game definitely is and he loves that game just as much. Over the holiday season, I'd definitely check Osmo's website to see if they have any deals going on, or if not, I'd totally recommend these games at full price. They would make the perfect gift!