Game Review: Castle Panic

Remember the board games you played as a kid?  They were probably things like Life, Monopoly, and Yahtzee.  And while there's nothing wrong with these games, despite updates that make the games current (Doctor Who Yahtzee?!?!  I'm sold!), the new modern era of board games are a lot more fun and offer amazing opportunities for family bonding.

Oops.  Is my inner geek showing?

I'm going to start by reviewing a game called Castle Panic. This was our family's first leap into a new genre of board games called "cooperative gaming".  Everyone works together: it's you vs. the game.  So you either all win together, or you all lose together. Cooperative gaming is a great way to play when you have younger school-age kids who want to join in the fun, but get tired of Mommy or Daddy or older sibling beating them all the time. 

Orcs, and goblins, and trolls!  Oh my!

In Castle Panic, you have a castle set up in the middle of the board, with monsters on the outskirts, in the forest.  On your turn, you attack the monsters using your cards.  At the end of each person's turn, the monsters move closer to the castle, and two new monsters are placed on the board.  There are specialty cards and specialty monsters that add variety to the game. 

Some monsters only need one "hit", some need two or three to be taken off of the board.  When a castle wall gets run into by a monster, it is removed from the game.  If the monsters knock down all of your walls, you lose the game.  If you manage to kill all of the monsters before they knock down all of your walls, you win!!

When we play, we lay out our cards in front of us so we all know what we have in our hands, and it's easy to trade cards and make a plan of attack.  Because of this cooperative style of play, you can easily involve children of all ages.  Our 2 year old is still too young, but our 5 year old can easily hold her own with Mommy and Daddy there to guide her just a little.

One of my favorite aspects of Castle Panic is that there are additional rules you can throw in the game to change it up a little and make it more competitive.  As you kill monsters, you can count points.  The person with the most points is the "Master Slayer".  Or you can have one person be the "Monster Overlord": on their turn they decide where on the board the monsters go in order to knock down the castle.  Both rules add an extra element of fun to the game.

I would recommend this game for kids ages 5+, depending on the child of course.  The theming is fun (who doesn't love monsters!) and the mechanics are simple.  It's a great family board game.