Ubongo Junior takes the classic tile-laying, pattern-matching play from the original Ubongo and scales it down for a younger audience.

In Ubongo Junior, each player starts the game with nine coloured tiles – each of a different shape and colour, and each showing an animal – along with a stack of seven puzzle boards. The puzzle boards show a configuration of squares that can be covered with two tiles (on the easy side) or three (on the hard side); the tiles that should be used are depicted on the board.

At the start of each round, each player reveals their board, finds the tiles needed, and then races to place them in the right spot. The first player to do so flips a sandtimer, then grabs gems from a bag, depending on the number of players in the game. The next player to complete her puzzle in time grabs one fewer gem, and so on until all players are finished.

The player who has accumulated the most gems after playing through seven rounds wins!