Race Against the Family with Ankama's Kingdom Run
Have you ever started a family game night too late in the evening? Believe me, when it’s too close to bedtime, you’re really playing with fire. And that’s exactly what happened to us recently with Kingdom Run. Our 5-year-old was not having it, especially when her brother put the characters on her team to sleep.
But, despite the fact that we seriously miscalculated the energy levels of our kids during our first family playthrough of this game, my wife and I could still see through the meltdown and realize that we really liked this game. It’s really fun. And if seeing that through a full-blown child implosion and still making Kingdom Run our Game of the Month isn’t a good endorsement for a good family game, I don’t know what is!
The first time we played Kingdom Run, it was just my son and I. We opened up the game and realized that there was one wooden character token missing. I reached out to Ankama to see if I could buy an extra piece, but, disappointingly, nobody responded. But this story has a happy ending. We have a very large bucket of old HABA wooden pieces, and we just so happened to have a wooden circle the exact same circumference! I just had to paint it red and we were good to go. Not that that tidbit matters in the least, I’m just feeling quite good at the moment about that bit of luck.
My son beat me pretty good in that first game, which isn’t too rare these days. It’s a real pleasure to see his little mind work so quickly to figure out the strategy of a new game. It took him no time to understand the concept of maximizing his turns to move his runners as far as possible, and that’s a great reminder to me that almost any board game makes for a good gameschooling game.
This is a racing game, where you’re trying to get your entire team to the podium at the end of the course before your opponents, because the first ones there get more points. And despite the fact that I was the first one to get my entire team to the finish line, I still lost the game, because my son had collected so many more victory points along the way.
I think that’s a good example of how the game has a good balance to it in terms of the strategy. It’s a racing game, but even winning the race isn’t necessarily a guaranteed win. The victory point coins are a nice touch, because you never have to despair and feel like the game is over until the very end.
After playing with my 9-year-old son, I felt pretty confident that our 5-year-old could handle the game too - even though the official age recommendation is 7+. The trickiest part is that there are dice with 6 different actions on them. But once you learn what the 6 different actions are, you’re good to go. And they are as follows:
Take a piece to the nearest lake or remove someone from a lake
Put someone to sleep or wake someone up
Steal a victory point coin from someone
Catch up to the nearest piece in front of you
Pick up every runner on a space and drop them 1 at a time on the following few spaces
Copy an action
Just as I suspected, our 5-year-old picked up the rules very quickly. After just a few turns, she had all of the actions memorized and was playing very independently. She still really hated when anyone put her pieces to sleep or stole a victory point coin from her, but I still mostly blame that on tiredness. She also drifted back and forth from wanting to play by herself to wanting to be on Mom’s team (which is a common tactic for managing competitive games in our house).
But, that being said, it is important to point out that this is a competitive game, and that’s not always our favorite way to play games together. Much more often we go for cooperative games in our family, but it can be fun to dip our toes in the competitive waters every once in a while. Just make sure everyone is warm and well-fed and wide awake!
As you can see by the art of the game, this is a very cute fantasy-themed world we have here. The story goes like this: every year in the Kingdom of Ewala, the king organizes a grand race between the various clans in the kingdom. Those clans are knights, sorcerers, people of the forest, and gnomes and goblins. The clan that wins gets to choose the new king, so the stakes are high.
Even if the gameplay has almost nothing to do with this story, and the game could technically stand alone without it, or have a completely different theme entirely, I still love stuff like this. As a big fan of storytelling and sharing books with the kids, I adore reading snippets like this out loud before games start. I think kids really appreciate it too, and it should never be underestimated how much imagination and storytelling help family games come to life.
Every clan sends their 4 best runners, and those are the pieces on your team. After you roll the 4 dice on your turn, you can re-roll any number of them one time, and then you perform your actions. Basically you’re either trying to hinder your opponents or trying to get your pieces to the finish line. It’s nice how straightforward the goal of a racing game is, because it’s pretty easy to explain to the kiddos.
Obviously the art and the fantasy theme is very appealing for us. And, I’m not going to lie at all, it’s definitely the art that caught my attention and convinced me to purchase this one. It’s no secret that I’m a sucker for fantasy-themed family games. We also really enjoyed The Hare & the Tortoise the board game, so I knew there was a good chance this racing game would be a hit.
You can play Kingdom Run with up to 4 players, but it works just fine with only 2 players the way my son and I did it. Next time we play our 5-year-old might be on Mom or Dad’s team, or maybe we’ll just play earlier in the day when everyone is in very good spirits! But it’s clear to see that this is the type of cute and balanced family game that will live on our shelves for a long time.
What family board games have you been enjoying lately? Have you played Kingdom Run before? Let us know in the comments!
