Look, if you normally do your gaming in a rough-as-guts pub, surrounded by angry bikies and/or those geek-bashing jocks in football jumpers you see on American TV shows, you should probably steer clear of Gumball Rally. If, on the other hand, you play games in the privacy of your own home – and especially if there are kids in your dice-slinging circle, it’s a great little title to play as a warm-up or cool-down.

(Though I suppose you could maybe win the bikies over by turning it into a drinking game of some kind.)

In this simple game, 3-8 players take on the role of go-kart racers looking to win the legendary Gumball Cup. To do so, they’ll jump in their machines and speed from San Francisco to Long Beach, California, avoiding obstacles and trying their level best to get the edge on their racing rivals.

Before the starter gun is fired, each player takes a thick cardboard representation of their go-kart – which illustrates the current ranking – and a couple of decks have to be prepared. Two Checkpoint cards and a Winner! card are shuffled in to the hazard deck, and each player is dealt three cards from the race deck.

As you might imagine, gameplay is all about these cards. On each turn, all racers (starting with the leader and moving down the line) lay down a numbered card to determine who’s in the lead and where the rest of the contestants sit in the ranking order. If the number on the card you play is higher than the racer in front of you, you pass them. Same goes for the racer in front of them…and so on.

Oh yeah, and if the card you’ve played is the same colour as the one played by the racer in front of you, your kart zips past them, regardless of the number.

Unfortunately, as is so often the case in these games, there are hazards to trip up the unwary. You see, after everyone has had their turn, a hazard card is flipped over from a secondary deck. Everyone who played a race card of the same colour as the hazard gets shipped to the back of the line.

At semi-random intervals, the flipped hazard card will be a Checkpoint. When this happens, there’s a scoring round. Racers in the top three positions chalk up points…but the race isn’t over until someone crosses the finish line.

The artwork in Gumball Rally is very light, fluffy and cartoony. The sun shines brightly, the moon wears a nightcap and every racer has a healthy packed lunch complete with a thermos. It’s very obviously aimed at a young audience, and might turn off gamers who are more keen on empire-building or bloody swordplay, but that doesn’t necessarily detract from the fun.

There’s a great deal of luck in this game, but clever hand management can help turn the race in your favour. Don’t expect to have total – or even major – control of how well your go-kart performs in pursuit of the prestigious Gumball Cup, but then, that’s not what the spirit of a free-for-all race across America’s all about, is it?

Like I said way up at the start there, Gumball Rally is a light, quick game that’s a great way to kick off a session. It’s also a top title for kids, which is simple enough for them play unsupervised, and has the additional benefit of keeping them occupied while you move onto more adult pursuits.

Like a round of Diplomacy. Or downing Jäegerbombs with bikies.