For more on Quarrel, check out our full Quarrel review. Or, for more of the best Xbox 360 games for a 10 year old, why not try our Family Game Finder
At its simplest, Quarrel is a hybrid of Scrabble and Risk. You start with a board divided up into territories, each with a number of troops on. From here, you can attack other people's squares and fight them for control of their territory, where you'll enter into a "Quarrel", where you have to make a longer word than your opponent. As always, however, there's something of a catch - your word can only be as long in letters as the number of troops you have, so if you have five troops, you can only make a maximum of a five letter word, even if you know what the anagram is!
Being a word game, Quarrel is obviously intended for those who are relatively confident in the reading and spelling department - and given the short time limit and some rather unforgiving opponents, it's definitely one for the older herd. While it could be argued Quarrel would be ideal for someone just tackling the trickier parts of the English language, a decent vocabulary is certainly required - it's perhaps one for when they've graduated from the Junior Scrabble game and onto the adult version...
In order to win a game, and conquer the entire board, you'll need some pretty serious vocabulary skills, and razor sharp spelling - which is no mean feat, particularly when you're facing off against some of the latter computer-controlled characters - which could be somewhat off-putting to a younger child. Something to bear in mind if you're thinking of buying this for your kids.
As a word based board game, Quarrel is essentially a digital version of Scrabble or the word games off Countdown, and as such has nothing in the way of any mature content. Although some rude words (or at least, words which have double meanings) are allowed offline, when it comes to playing over Xbox Live, anything that could possibly be construed as rude, or otherwise offensive is banned.
At it's heart, Quarrel is a multiplayer game - but only over Xbox Live; there's no option for same console, everyone in a room together multiplayer. That said, two (or more) pairs of eyes are better than one, so you can kind of adapt the single player modes to incorporate a few extra people, even if it's not quite the same.
Age Ratings
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
