Dad in Chad Board Game Review: A Fun Africa Geography Game for Homeschoolers

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Inside: Our honest Dad in Chad board game review after playing with one teenager and three adults. See how this Africa geography game works, what it teaches, and how we’d use it in homeschool.

Geography is probably one of the easiest subjects to enrich with games and we have tried a lot over the years.

But we all know that educational games can be hit or miss. Some teach plenty but feel very much like school with game pieces added. Others are genuinely fun, but the educational part is so light that I am never quite sure how much anyone is actually learning.

Then we played Dad in Chad: Africa Edition.

I had been excited about this one from the moment I opened the box. After sitting down to play it with one teenager and three adults, I can comfortably say this is the best geography game we have tried so far.

The reason is simple: you actually need geography to play, but it still feels like a real game everyone wants to be part of.

You are constantly looking at the map, locating countries, thinking about borders, noticing coastlines, comparing positions and working out how to build your route. And because you are doing all of that because you want to win, it does not feel like somebody has stopped family game night to give you a geography quiz.

That is exactly the kind of balance I want from gameschooling.

This is a sponsored post. I was given the product to review and may have been compensated for my time. However, I was not required to write a positive review, and everything shared here reflects my own experience and opinions. I would never endorse or recommend a program we wouldn’t use ourselves. Read more in my Disclosure.

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A Little About Dad in Chad

Dad in Chad: Africa Edition is a geography board game designed for older kids, teens and families. It includes Country cards for all 54 African countries, Adventure cards connected with individual countries, and transportation cards that let you build routes using cars, boats and planes.

The game was created by longtime friends Stephanie Bailey Troeller and Liza Cohn.

It started when Liza brought Stephanie an idea for a country-doodling game. Stephanie, who has more than 20 years of experience in comics and consumer product design, saw the potential to turn that idea into something bigger: an illustrated board game built around the countries themselves, beginning with Africa.

As they worked through the shapes of the different countries, Chad looked a little like the profile of a man’s head, which became the Dad in Chad mnemonic, and later the name of the game.

Stephanie created the original hand-drawn artwork, and the two spent nearly two years developing and playtesting the game with families, teenagers, adults and students in middle and high schools.

How the Dad in Chad Board Game Works

The first thing that makes Dad in Chad feel different is the board itself. The entire game takes place on a map of Africa, and you quickly realize that the map is not there simply to make the game look educational. You need it constantly.

The goal is to be the first player to build a valid route from South Africa back home to Chad, with at least three Adventure cards paired with countries along your route.

Each turn has two parts. After rolling the dice, you first move the Cruise Ship from port to port around the coast of Africa using the number on the black die. Then you move your pawn around the outside of the board using the total of both dice. Depending on where you land, you might collect cards, lose cards, swap something or have another action that changes what you can do.

The Country cards you collect are what you use to build your route, and you connect them using cars, boats and planes:

• Cars work across shared land borders.
• Boats depend on access to the coast.
• Planes give you more flexibility when countries would otherwise be difficult to connect.

Suddenly you are not just trying to remember that a country exists. You need to know where it is in relation to everything else.

The Adventure cards fit into the strategy too. Each one pairs with a specific country, and matching the correct Adventure card to one of your Country cards locks that country so another player cannot take it.
The Adventure cards add little glimpses of wildlife, cities, sports, arts, science, technology and other aspects of life in Africa.

And then there is the cruise ship.

You always have to keep an eye on it because it can interfere with your plans and take an unlocked coastal country! That little bit of player interference was actually fun for us. It means you are not only concentrating on your own cards. You are watching where the cruise ship is, paying attention to what everyone else is building and occasionally having to rethink a route you were very happy with a moment ago.

Despite everything going on, the game itself is surprisingly straightforward, and that may be one of my favorite things about it. I’m a single working homeschool mom. I do not have time to learn very complicated rules for a game, no matter how much Marc enjoys making things more complicated for us! With this one, we did not spend the evening constantly stopping to reread the rules. Once we understood the basic structure, we could concentrate on actually playing.

There is also a very handy rulebook included. It is easy to follow, and the photos showing what things should look like in real play helped us a lot.

What Did Dad in Chad Feel Like to Play?

When I first opened the game, I said it gave me a little bit of a Monopoly vibe, and I still think that after playing it, although the games themselves are obviously not alike.

You are not buying properties or collecting rent. It is more that familiar family-game feeling where you are moving around a board, collecting what you need, watching what everybody else is doing and occasionally having somebody mess up a plan you were quite happy with.

Monopoly has always been a favorite in our house, so that sort of interaction works well for us.

Marc is competitive, and once he realized he could see which countries the rest of us needed, he started taking that into account as part of his strategy.

Watch the Dad in Chad video review

If you’d rather see Dad in Chad in action, I also made a full video review where I show you the game, explain how it works, and talk through what we liked most about it for homeschool geography and gameschooling with a teen.

https://youtu.be/-_6I0WpS56A

Why This Geography Game Worked So Well for Us

After playing Dad in Chad, a few things stood out immediately. These are the strongest reasons it worked so well for us, both as a family game and as a homeschool resource.

1. The Geography Is Part of the Game

The biggest reason Dad in Chad worked so well for us is that the educational part is not sitting separately from the actual game. We have tried plenty of educational games where you play a fairly normal board game and every so often everything stops while somebody asks you a question before you return to playing.

Dad in Chad works differently because you need the geography to play. Where a country is, what it connects to and how you can use it all affect the decisions you make. So you are not learning geography in between turns. You are using geography during the game because it helps you play better.

If you removed the geography from Dad in Chad, you would have to change the game itself. For me, that is what makes an educational game genuinely educational rather than simply attaching quiz questions to normal gameplay.

The geography is not something you stop playing to learn. It is part of how you play and how you win.

2. It Builds Real Map Skills

There is also a much broader geography skill happening because you are constantly looking at how places relate to one another. You notice shared borders, neighboring countries, coastlines, relative position and how you could move from one part of Africa to another.

Hello, relative position!

Those are real map-reading and spatial-geography skills, and you are using them for a reason rather than practicing them in isolation. This has become increasingly important to me because we live in a world where it is incredibly easy to open Google Maps, follow a blue line and arrive somewhere without really thinking about where we are going, what surrounds us or how places fit together.

I still want Marc to be able to look at a map and make sense of those relationships for himself. I want him to see a map as something that gives him useful information, not simply something he studies during a geography lesson. Dad in Chad gives him a reason to do exactly that.

3. It Turns Country Names Into Actual Locations

This was probably my biggest personal realization while playing.

We have all seen those Reels where people are stopped on the street and asked to name three countries in Africa, and suddenly somebody is staring blankly at the camera or naming somewhere like Taiwan…

They are funny, but there is a bigger geography problem underneath them. Geography taught as a list of facts isn’t fun for everyone, and plenty of us reach adulthood with some surprising gaps in our map knowledge.

And there is something else at play. There a huge difference between recognizing the name of a country and having a mental picture of where that country actually is. I discovered some of my own gaps while we were playing.

At one point I got Equatorial Guinea. I knew Equatorial Guinea existed. But ask me to confidently point to it on a blank map of Africa before playing this game? I had to find it. And what I liked in this game setting is that all cards are placed face-up so that means everyone can actually participate in helping you find your country. It’s just such a great way to connect around a game.

And the same thing happened with several other countries in our family. We knew their names, but had never spent much time thinking about exactly where they sat on the continent or which countries surrounded them. So we had to collectively look for them.

4. It Builds Geography Knowledge Through Repeated Exposure

Dad in Chad makes you attach the name to a place. You find the country. You look at what borders it. You see where it sits relative to somewhere else. You may need it for a route. You may encounter it again in another game. Over time, that country stops being an isolated word. It starts having a location. And this is exactly the kind of learning through repeated exposure that I have been trying to build into our homeschool from the beginning.

I am not a big fan of memorizing a list just to reproduce it later. I would much rather expose Marc to the same information in different ways until it starts to make sense or simply sticks. That is what I think this geography game does really well. You are seeing the country name on a card, finding it on the map, connecting it to neighboring countries, using it in a route, and then potentially coming across it again the next time you play.

That repeated contact is not forced memorization. It is familiarity and it builds over time. For me, that is the kind of learning that is much more likely to last.

5. The Learning Can Be Surprisingly Collaborative

Another thing I really liked was something I did not necessarily expect from a competitive game. The Country cards are face-up, so when somebody could not immediately find a country, everybody started looking together. Nobody was being put on the spot while everyone else waited to see if they knew the answer. We were talking about the map, pointing things out and helping each other find places as we played.

And because you can see everybody else’s cards, you are also being exposed to countries that are not part of your own route. You might hear somebody mention one, watch them find it on the map and end up learning something from a card you never even held yourself.

Dad in Chad is still competitive, but the geography learning became collaborative, and I really liked that.

6. The Adventure Cards and Artwork Add Another Layer

The Adventure cards help countries become more than shapes and names on a map because they connect them with wildlife, cities, sports, arts, science, technology and other aspects of life across Africa.

I do not expect a board game to teach everything a child should know about an entire continent, and it should not try to. But these cards can give you little starting points for curiosity. Something catches your child’s attention, and suddenly you have a reason to look it up or learn more.

I also really like the artwork. Stephanie illustrated the game by hand, and the cards have a lot of personality. When you are trying to make unfamiliar information memorable, those visual associations can help, and they are certainly more interesting than a plain stack of geography flashcards.

How I’d Use Dad in Chad in Homeschool — and Who I Think It’s For

I am adding Dad in Chad to our favorite homeschool curriculum and resources list and here’s where I think it shines.

Gameschooling Can Absolutely Continue Into High School

I think Dad in Chad is a really good example of why gameschooling can still have a place in high school.

Marc is 15, and at this age I am not looking for games just to make school feel more fun. What interests me is giving him opportunities to actually use what he knows instead of only reading or memorizing something for a test. A good game can do that because it puts information into a situation where you have to make decisions with it.

In Dad in Chad, knowing where a country is is not the end goal; you need that knowledge to play the game and win. And I think that matters even more in high school, when so much learning can become abstract and focused on books, notes and tests. I still want Marc to have opportunities to interact with what he is learning, make connections, discuss it with other people and actually do something with that knowledge.

That is why I do not see gameschooling as something children eventually outgrow. At this age, I actually care even more about giving Marc different ways to think about and use what he is learning.

That, to me, is the real value of gameschooling in high school.

It Works Alongside Geography Studies

I could easily bring Dad in Chad out during an Africa unit or use it alongside a world geography course or unit study. I could also see us playing it on a lighter Friday or simply during family game night.

That flexibility matters because I do not need every educational resource to become its own formal lesson. Sometimes there is a lot of value in bringing the same subject back in a completely different context. And if one of the Adventure cards sparks a question, we can pull out an atlas, look something up or follow that rabbit trail. I like that this is optional. I do not need to turn every interesting card into a research project.

It Is Especially Well Suited to Older Kids, Teens and Families

Dad in Chad is officially recommended for ages 12 and up, and based on our experience, I think that is a good fit. There was enough strategy and competition to keep my 15-year-old interested, while the three adults could play at the same level and enjoy it for the game itself.

I would especially look at Dad in Chad for:

• middle or high school students studying Africa or world geography
• teens who enjoy strategy or family board games
• families looking for an educational game adults can enjoy too
• homeschoolers who want more geography without adding another workbook
• co-ops or small groups

It Could Work Very Well in a Homeschool Co-op

The game itself is competitive, but as I mentioned earlier, the geography can become very collaborative.

Because the Country cards are visible, everybody can follow what is happening on the board, help locate countries and learn from cards belonging to other players.

That makes it a particularly interesting option for a homeschool co-op or small group because learning does not stop just because it is somebody else’s turn.

A Few Things to Know Before You Buy Dad in Chad

There are a couple of things I would keep in mind.

First, there is definitely player interference. Other players can affect your plans, and the Cruise Ship can interfere with countries you are trying to use. We enjoy that kind of game, but if your family strongly dislikes having other players disrupt a carefully constructed plan, this may matter to you.

Second, Dad in Chad is not really a capitals-and-flags drill. If your main goal is memorizing capitals and flags, I would choose something designed specifically for that.

Its real strength is map familiarity and spatial geography: country locations, borders, coastlines, neighboring countries, relative position and understanding how different places connect.

Our Dad in Chad Review: Final Thoughts

I was excited about Dad in Chad before we played it but playing it is what convinced me to keep it on our homeschool shelf of favorites. What I love most is still the simplest thing about it: you have to use geography to win.

There are many educational games that manage the “game” part well and leave the education somewhere in the background. Dad in Chad does not make me choose between the two.

Marc’s biggest complaint about Dad in Chad was really that there was not more of it. He wants other continents, and I do too. I would absolutely be interested in seeing the same idea applied to Europe, Asia, North and South America and other parts of the world because this format worked so well for us.

And I firmly believe nothing replaces repeated hands-on interaction with a map. If you can put that into a board game the entire family genuinely wants to play, even better. For us, this is the best geography game we have tried so far and I can see us bringing this one back to the table for years. Dad in Chad is staying.

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