King of Tokyo - review and variation

King of Tokyo

I don't usually review games, here are plenty of other reviewers out there, my ADA's are what i focus on in this blog and this is perhaps in some ways that, but it turned out to be more of a review than a pure Age Down Adaptation so i had to name it a such.

A previous entry of mine (link) suggested that one of the games that ruined games for everyone was snakes and ladders with it's brainless roll and move mechanic. I personally remember enjoying the game when I was much younger, but it didn't last and when I became merely younger it was in fact dull and repetitive. The article also suggested that instead of snakes and ladders we ought to be playing 'King of Tokyo'.

I have in fact played this game thanks to my lovely gaming group. And to be honest I wasn't a fan of it to begin with.

It's fun enough, and simple enough, the Yahtzee dice rolling mechanic was easy and enjoyable, and the theme was fun although I’m not a fan of those dodgy Japanese monster movies they always seemed a tap ludicrous to me.

So what was it I didn't like?

Two aspect of it really stood out to me, both effecting the enjoyment for me and the other in my opinion making it a hard game to introduce to small children.

I'll start be saying I have a general issue with the concept of 'competition is good' in sport and such it's ok but I think the concept is applied to too much in out world and our leisure activities don't need as much of it as there seems to be. So I'll start be mentioning the elimination factor of this game. Each player has a tracker to track both life and points. Points being how you win the game (first to 20), life being the thing that when it gets down to 0 you're out of the game and relegated to watching others have fun. Adults might have no issue with this concept but kids would in fact find it very difficult I think. This means that while I can play snakes and ladders with my 4 year old, this game is perhaps not the sort of thing I can play with her.

I suppose many people could suggest that a kid needs t learn these things, to which I ask why must any child learn about exclusion? Particularly form their own family unit.

Ok parenting issues aside my second issue actually effected my own enjoyment. There's an entire ganging up and victimisation feeling to some of this game. I'm the first to admit that I like euro games, I like playing my own game and ok sometimes that may inconvenience another player but I'm not actively going out of my way to limit, damage or effect the other players game. And yes, I can and sometimes fairly often do win games this way.

It does mean I struggle with more competitive games, I play an awful lot of Game of Thrones living card game and I struggle with people interfering with my game, but I'm managing it. King of Tokyo sees people deliberately targeting the other player, trying to kill them, eliminate them and remove them from the game, forcing them to not be able to play any more. I find that to be not enjoyable, I don't like targeting others and I don't like being targeted.

These are my own issues, others enjoy these things incredibly.

With this in mind my darling husband has given it some thought, he quite enjoyed the game but agreed with me that playing with young children would be an issue due to the elimination factor. With some thought he came up with something to house rule in that could very well work.

Instead of elimination when life is dropped to 0, that player could drop their points by half, and bring their life backup to max and continue on playing. There's penalty for 'dying' and to counter the advantage of being on max life when others likely will not be, but they are still in the game and with a bit of calculated risk taking could possible still win.

All in all would I buy this for my family? With this variation in mind, yeah I just might one day. It is in it's own way a fun little, quick game. And I need to work on my issues for myself , not just deny these experiences to my family because I have an issue or two.

I'd probably wait till I found it cheap though.

I'll leave off now with a couple of videos

one being the dice tower review of the game the second being the Table Top episode where they play the game.

Enjoy!