LOKI's Magic Market is Enchanting Family Fun
I love the French board game company LOKI. You may have noticed that already - perhaps based on how many of their games rank highly in our definitive lists of the best board games for each age. I love their top notch art, I love their cute and engaging themes, and, most importantly, I love their gameplay that interests and challenges the parents just as much as the kids.
You can recognize LOKI games on the shelf because of their signature turquoise-colored boxes - much like how HABA uses their signature yellow. I suppose that’s interesting to note since those are probably my two favorite and most consistent board game publishers for families. Are you listening publishers? Maybe the big secret is claiming a good color before they’re all taken and sticking with it.
But of course their good sense of style is not all that LOKI has going for them. Their family games are good - like really good. While HABA seems to dominate the market in quality games for 2-4 year olds, I basically feel the same way about LOKI for 6-10 year olds. Indeed, most of their very best games are made for that sweet spot of board gaming - when kids are 6 or 7 years old. And this month’s Game of the Month, Magic Market, is no exception to that rule.
When I chat with customers and tell them how much our family enjoys LOKI games, I usually mention that they make fantastic cooperative games. SOS Dino, Kraken Attack!, and Detective Charlie are three of our most beloved board games in our collection, and they are all cooperative games from LOKI. And now Magic Market - one of their most recently released family games - will certainly join that list of favorites. The only difference is that Magic Market is actually a competitive game.
First and foremost, the best thing about Magic Market is that both my 7-year-old and my 10-year-old love it. Anyone that tries to make family game night work will attest to the fact that it’s always special when siblings 3 years apart love the same game. This game accomplishes that feat through it’s cute magic theme and deft balance of skill and luck.
The skill in this game comes primarily from memory - which is always a very popular mechanic in our house, perhaps because my kids are quite better at remembering things than I am. But there’s also a bit of skill to be had in choosing which items to add to your shop next, and even a bit of negotiating skill mixed in as well.
For the gameschool-minded among you, Magic Market also allows for a bit of useful practice reading a clock and counting money - which is called dragos instead of dollars. I think that was cleverly planned, as both of those skills are perfectly aimed at the target age of 6+, and they both fit in with the theme quite seamlessly.
How to Play Magic Market
Magic Market is a competitive game where the goal is to earn the most money, or dragos. To earn dragos, you must sell your magical goods to customers. Each customer wants to purchase a certain type of good, so once their desire is revealed, it behooves everyone to remember what they want for the rest of the game.
Each magical good in your store is marked as a certain category - a toy, a plant, a costume, etc. And you can only sell them to a customer searching for that type. After you roll the dice, you rotate the market, and only 3 customers will be standing in front of your stall. Then you must choose just one of those customers - and hope they are looking to buy one of the goods you have available.
If the customer is looking for a good you are selling, then you get to roll the die with colors on it. Each good is labeled with 3 prices - low, medium, and high. The prices are color-coded, and it is entirely luck based exactly how much money you get for the sale.
Some of the customers are actually buddies who will watch your stall while you go shopping. It’s a requirement to buy a certain number of goods from your opponents before the game is over, so you need to use those turns to choose a good from an opponent’s stall, and hopefully pay as little as possible!
And this is where a bit of haggling can come into play. You can offer to pay your competitors any price you want, and they can agree or disagree. If they disagree, you simply roll the color die like usual and decide payment that way. This rule is a bit interesting, because both of my kids handled it quite differently. My son was convinced that offering to pay the middle price was the only logical choice, and likewise accepted the middle price from others. But my daughter was very happy to roll the dice and press her luck at any opportunity.
After a certain number of turns, which is tracked by the turn of the hands on a clock, the market closes up for the day. But the game isn’t over until everyone buys the allotted number of goods from their competitors. If you still need to buy some goods from others, you’re at a disadvantage, because now they get to choose which item you have to buy, and they can choose a more expensive one.
After all the final sales happen, you simply count up your dragos to see who has the most money and who wins the game! I think it ultimately has a great balance of memory, planning, and luck - and we certainly don’t have any complaints about the imaginative roleplaying as a vendor in a vibrant fairy tale magic market either. And to help with that, it even comes with a cute, superfluous, cardboard magic wand as well.
Who is Magic Market for?
The official age recommendation is 6+, but, like I mentioned before, both my 7-year-old and 10-year-old enjoy playing this game. It’s also worth pointing out that I very much enjoy playing this game with them as well. Memory tends to be a great equalizer for us, and it’s very hard for us to predict who is going to win until the very end.
I think it’s safe to say that if you tend to enjoy fantasy stories and sword and sorcery - there’s a good chance that the theme of this family game will speak to you. I love that some customers are shopping for magical weapons and spellbooks while some are just looking for toys. It’s a very cute game with fantastic art on the board and on all of the magical goods (not to mention the awesome cover illustration).
I thought it was very cute how much my daughter likes to pick and choose which magical items to put into her store based entirely on whether she likes them or not. It might not be the best strategy, and she might accidentally fill her store up with too many items in the same category, but it just goes to show how important the engagement from the theme and the art and the roleplaying is for her.
I’m very happy to recommend Magic Market to anyone looking for a competitive family game with kids anywhere in that 6-10 range. It works slightly better with more people (it works with up to 4), if only because it’s a bit harder to predict who is winning. But I’ve also played both my son and my daughter in 2-player games, and it’s still a blast and a very fair battle.
This was an easy choice for our May Game of the Month. LOKI rarely fails to deliver a special and memorable experience, and I’m excited to find out that Magic Market isn’t an exception to that rule. I’m sure that very soon there will be many little witches and wizards out there hawking their magical wares, and making some magical game night memories.
Are you a LOKI fan? Which of their games is your favorite? Have you tried Magic Market yet? Let us know in the comments!
