Review: Hurry Up!
Publisher: Ravensburger
Year: 1993
Tagline: Stack ‘em high and stack ‘em fast before your turn is past.
Players: 2 to 6

how we met

This is such a heartwarming how-we-met. I had placed Hurry Up! on my BGG wishlist after seeing it on some website. I like dexterity games and this one seemed unique and cute. And if I’m honest, the barrier to entry on my wishlist is not real high.

So I’m living my life, never finding Hurry Up! and probably forgetting about it. Then one day, an angel masquerading as BGG user demiankatz messaged me saying he has a spare copy with all the important bits, and would I like to have it for the cost of shipping? Yes, Demian, I would. I would just need to provide my own dice and chips, which I have in abundance. He even made a black and white copy of the rules for me. I tried to give back a little bit when I saw he was missing a spring for Crocodile Hunter, and I had a spare.

So, Hurry Up! landed on my doorstep through the kindness of a fellow BGG user that offered it up out of the kindness of his heart.

how it plays

In Hurry Up! there are 12 cardboard crates with holes on the top that fit neatly in the Hurry Up! box. The game also includes a hand crane, which looks like a fishing pole with a hook on the end. Players should decide up front how many rounds they want to play.

Cute, right?

On a player’s turn, they use the hand crane to pull a crate of their choice out of the box and begin a stack of crates on the table. While they are stacking crates, the other players are rolling a die and as soon as someone rolls a six the stacking player must stop. They get a chip for every crate stacked. The hand crane then moves to the next player and this process is repeated, using the same stack made by the previous player. The round ends when all 12 crates have been stacked.

Our hero, the hand crane.

If crates fall from the stack during a player’s turn, they are returned to the box and that player’s turn is over. Whichever player has the most points/chips at the end of the pre-determined number of rounds wins Hurry Up!

how it went

I played Hurry Up! a few years after I received it, in one of my regular gaming group’s post-pandemic game nights. This is a simple dexterity game deemed best for ages 5-12, so our play did not take long.

A somewhat artsy shot of our play.

We played 7 rounds. Most of us did pretty well, but I seemed to be rather gifted at this particular stacking challenge. I won handily. It’s probably because I watch so much Survivor.

One common criticism of Hurry Up! is how unbalanced the timing can be, since a player is allowed to continue stacking until a six is rolled. That does seem like a fair frustration. But for those of us who Lady Luck watches over, this turn limit works just fine.

It is very difficult to line the crates up nicely, so this is pretty standard expected play, all crooked.

My biggest criticism is that Hurry Up! stacking was rather easy. But this is a game for kiddos, and I can see it being a lot of fun as the stack continues to grow.

play or pass

Pass. I enjoyed Hurry Up! and it’s awfully cute, but I think it’s best when playing with kiddos. If you have young ones, this is a perfectly fun and simple dexterity game. For someone with my awfully adult sensibilities, I don’t see myself pulling Hurry Up! off the shelves very often.