The jigsaw puzzle I had printed for my nephew’s birthday recently was such a hit (both with him and with me, I do love a good puzzle!) that I knew I had to create something equally special for my younger nephew’s birthday. When my kids were little they had a wonderful memory game set that they both loved, so I decided to recreate that magic and make a dinosaur version for my dino-loving nephew.

While a memory game is relative simple to make from scratch, I wanted something a bit special for him so I decided to order the 24 card memory® Game from Photobox. I paid full price for this which is £39.99, it’s currently on sale for £24.99 for the 24 card version. Delivery to the UK was £6.99. Here’s the info on the game from Photobox’s website:

• Set of 24 playing cards, made from 12 photos
• Also available in a set of 72, made from 36 photos
• Each card is 60 x 60 mm
• Thick, sturdy card – perfect for small hands!
• With a white border around each card, the photo really stands out
• Made for us by Ravensburger, Europe’s leading puzzle specialist
• Suitable for players aged 3 and above

To make the cards I whipped up a quick square canvas template in Photoshop, added a solid background colour and then a single illustration from my Prehistoric pack, resizing to fit the square. I then duplicated the same template, switched the colours and the illustrations until I had 12 different cards ready to go, saved as individual files.

I couldn’t find any information on bleed on Photobox’s site, so I made sure to allow a few mm on each edge to ensure the illustrations weren’t cut off when they were printed. The white border on the cards is added automatically during the ordering process and the finished cards have had very little lost from my original uploaded images. As long as you don’t have any text or faces right on the edge of your images you should be good to go without making any adjustments for bleed.

It was really easy to upload the images to the website and to create the game, it only took a couple of minutes and my order was placed! Delivery to the UK took 9 days.

Photobox memory® Game review

Just a quick note that this isn’t a sponsored post, I paid for the game myself and haven’t included any affiliate links – I’m just sharing my thoughts on it with you, crafter to crafter!

The overall printing quality is good (there’s lots of detail in the drawings) but the colour isn’t as accurate as the jigsaw I previously had printed. The colours are much less saturated on the memory game cards and some of the black outlines aren’t very dark. You can see the difference in the saturation here between the image on the tin lid (overly saturated to be honest!) and the cards themselves. The actual files I uploaded are somewhere between the two.

This isn’t a huge issue for me in this case as the more muted colours suit the dino theme, but it was a little disappointing especially compared to the great results I had with the printed jigsaw.

The storage tin is great and adds a little something special to the game, perfect for gifting! Even the plastic insert feels pretty sturdy and the cards fit in well. An instruction leaflet is also included in multiple languages. To play the game you shuffle the cards, place them face down and take it in turns to find matching pairs turning over two cards at a time and removing each found pair of cards once matched. The winner is the player with the most matched pairs at the end of the game!

I picked the bold single colour backgrounds for my cards to allow them to be used for other matching activities (finding all the cards with a yellow background for example) and included a variety of animals, plants and objects so the cards could also be used for matching types as well.

The cards themselves have a matte coated finish and feel pretty durable, if a little thinner than I expected. The game is marketed as for ages 3 and upwards but I think that some younger players might struggle a little with the thinner cards. The cards are probably about 1.5mm thick, so definitely not chunky board-book style! They do feel robust though and I think they would stand up to quite a bit of wear and tear and many memory game championships!

The reverse of the cards all have the same Ravensburger logo pattern on them. It would have been nice to be able to customise the back of the cards with a single image of my choice but the blue and white background works well when all the cards are face down waiting to be matched.

My verdict:

The game makes a great gift and it’s always lovely to be able to make something personal to give to a special someone. Having said that, I would probably wait for a sale or discount code to order another and I’d definitely make adjustments to the uploaded images to boost the saturation levels as I was a little disappointed in both the colour reproduction and the value for money at full price. I do like my colours bright and bold though so that may not be as much of an issue for you! Overall it’s a good quality game that will make a special present. I’m looking forward to playing it with my nephew and finding all the dinosaurs!