Men at work takes the block stacking of Jenga and dials it up to ten. Much like Jenga you’ll be up against some friends to see who is the last person standing or who has impressed boss Rita three times. More on that later.

Men at work is a stacking and balancing game in which players compete as workers on a job site who are carefully constructing a tower to avoid accidents and, maybe, earn employee of the month.

What’s it about?

If you like agility games then you should definitely give this game a look. At the beginning of the game a crane gets set up, each player receives 3 safety certificates and then the first player start drawing form the build deck. The crane can be used to balance the pieces that are being played. The cards tells a player what they need to place – this could be a number of building materials, a worker, a worker with building materials and if there are any placing restrictions. The placing restrictions forces the player to adhere to a certain color, type of material or position where the placement should take place. This can become quite complex but also makes for very entertaining maneuvers on the table.

One of the cards also brings out Boss Rita. And once she shows up it’s all about impressing the boss to better your chances of winning. One does that by placing your piece to become the highest placed piece on the table. Do this 3 times and you win. The other win mechanic involves outlasting your opponents through the safety certificates. Every time you cause a piece on the table to fall you loose one certificate. Run out and you’re eliminated from the game.

As soon as anything falls an accident takes place. This means the current player stops his turn and the next player must now proceed the clear up the accident. This forces the player to remove any loose pieces lying on the table before they get to take their turn. If in turn they make an accident – this happens fairly often 😉 Then their turn ends, they lose a safety certificate and the next player has to clean up the accident and so on.

Components

The game includes three gaming modules to add loads of playability, as well as wooden components housed within a well-designed insert for easy set up.The game components are very well made and the worker meeples with their little construction hats are amazing. The game components are pretty small and thus best suited for children that are slightly older. The recommend age is 8 years and up, making it a great family game.

The cards are decent quality and like with all games it’s always recommended that they get sleeved. There’s 37 cards and the size you’ll need is 65x65mm.

Should you play it?

If you like stacking games then this one of the best. It plays up to 5 people and you can add more if you lower the amount of safety certificates that each players get. We really enjoyed this one and it’s great to see people holding their breath when placing the pieces. We found having only the active player around the table ensures that no accidental table knocks happen. The last thing you want is to accidentally spoil someone’s turn.