The monsters have come. They are going to destroy Tokyo. And they are going to destroy each other in the process. Mass chaos ensues, and it seems like the world is going to end. This is the board game version of that.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Short Explanation of How to Play
King of Tokyo takes the old Japanese monster movies and mixes them with the game king of the hill. Getting to the middle of the board gets the player more points, and they can attack all of the other players, but at the cost of being able to be hit and knocked out by every other player. The tension of the game comes when characters can only take a limited amount of hits to win the game, and at the same time they have to put themselves in harms way to have a chance to get the 20 victory points necessary to win if the monsters survive that long.
Why it Works/Doesn't Work For Our Family
What Worked: This game is a favorite of my kids. It is one my daughter requests often, and there have been many times where my son and daughter have pulled it out to play on their own, or I have found my daughter playing both sides in a two character game. That shows me (1) they enjoy this game enough to commit to play it on their own, and (2) the game is easy enough to understand that they can pull out the game and play it on their own.
What Was Challenging: This game is very easy to play and learn, but I have had occasions playing it with various people where someone’s feelings were hurt when they were knocked out of the game by someone else. While the game is cartoonish, players are attacking one another, and the players need to understand that going in and accept that aggressive play will be part of the game.
Why it Works/Doesn't Work With Friends
The games I have played with my gaming friends have been fun. The nice thing about this game is that there are lots of creative cards that can be used to power up a character or hinder other characters, so there is a wide variety of game play that can expand from the fairly simple base mechanics. Also, this game goes fairly fast, so this game could be played multiple times, or it could be played once before another game.
Teacher's Corner
There are lots of simple addition scenarios when calculating victory points and hits, but there are not other concepts that I would use this game to try to teach.
Overall opinion, rating, and recommendation
6 year old son - My son likes playing with the cardboard characters, and the aggressive play of attacking his opponents.
9 year old daughter - My daughter likes collecting energy and buying the most helpful cards to build up her character so that she can win the game.
Mine - I will rate this game Casual Family. It is a simple game to learn and play, and is a lot of fun for players of different ages. The cards in the game do add a lot of variety in gameplay. There is dice rolling, which is a random mechanic that many people don’t like, but the dice rolls allow for choices on rerolls which mitigate some of the randomness. Also, people who don’t like aggressive games where players need to attack one another wouldn’t like this game.
Games with similarities with this one at each rating level:
Casual Family: Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots
Heavy Family: Axis and Allies 1941
Casual Adult: Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game
Heavy Adult: War of the Ring
Comments