Dotted Games Monkey Palace: A Lego Board Game - Build Your Way to Victory Brick by Brick! Fun Family Brick-Building Game for Kids & Adults, Ages 10+, 2-4 Players, 45 Minute Playtime

My family loves Lego - even my wife has a near full collection of their flowers - and board games. When this game was announced, I knew it would be a perfect fit for us if the gameplay was solid. I'm happy to say that for us it is. The Good: This game is fully backed by Lego, so you know the quality of the bricks. The rest of the components are good as well. The cards are fine, especially because there is limited shuffling, the iconography on them is easy to understand, and the cardboard player boards are heavy & sufficient. I thought the instructions were going to be overkill at first glance, but once I got through them I can say they are nicely done. They only looked overwhelming because they go to great length - with pictures - to make everything clear. My son is 10 and had no problems jumping right in. Setup will be quick after your first playthrough (more on that below), it looks great on the table assuming you're a fan of Lego, and the gameplay moves quick enough not to overstay its welcome. Scoring is super simple; you count bananas on cards at the end of the game. There are also a couple of "mini-expansions" in the box (which are each literally a single Lego piece & new rule), which show how easily you could create your own expansions with a little creativity. The Bad: Every player's turn is the same... every turn. While the tower will be constructed differently each time, offering different paths, the basic game will be the same every time. While we have yet to tire of it, I fear some may get bored with it after repeat plays. The game is also very dependent on the colors on the cards and playing board - light green, dark green, and tan. I fear that for some with color blindness the greens may be difficult to differentiate. While the coloring makes sense thematically, it is a slight nitpick. The instructions, while clear and easy enough to follow, are printed are pretty thin paper & not even stapled together. Perhaps that's a cost-saving measure, but they look pretty bad compared to the rest of the presentation. The Indifferent: There is no component organization in the box, other than 3 trays for the various "stairway" components. The first time you setup the game, you have to sort/separate all of the various Lego pieces. While tedious, as long as you separate all of the components into Ziploc baggies when you put it away, subsequent setups will be very quick. If you store your games upright, baggies will be a necessity anyway if you don't want a jumbled mess the next time you open the box. Thematically, you're rebuilding a lost palace for monkeys... or something... I'm here for the gameplay, not the theme! To be clear, this isn't Chutes & Ladders or Candy Land. There are rules, quite a few of them actually, for how you can and cannot build the tower. It's going to take some reading - or watching a How-To Play video on YouTube - before you can jump in and play. For anyone familiar with modern board games this won't be a problem. If you're looking for something to set in front of kids and let them have at it, I think you'll be disappointed. Overall I feel this game is fantastic as a family game, and fantastic as a lighter-weight intro to modern board games. I do feel like it will eventually get to feel very "samey" if played a lot, but if rotated with other games I don't think that will be an issue. I also think this is the perfect game for creating new house rules with your own Lego you may have laying around!

Amazing family game. This is a ton of fun, especially for people who like to build legos. Not too complicated but it does have a learning curve at first. Once you get it, fairly simple. Challenges your mind to get creative and figure out the best way to maximize banana points. It is fun to look at, so attractive, and well designed. For the cost, this is a no brainer, great value. It isn't expensive and yet has so many fun components, unlike many more complicated family games. Incorporates visual-spacial, critical thinking, kinesthetic, and strategy, all while ticking the playful fun of legos. It has been one of our go to games on Family Fun nights and has not gotten old. Our son is a smart 8, but I think this would work ok for even a 6 or 7 year old if they are already good with following the rules and understanding them. Adults enjoy it too, so you aren't stuck playing a boring kid game. Easy to clean up and not too long of a set up. Limitation is that only up to 4 people can play it, so it might not work with extended family or larger families unless you play teams. I would highly recommend this for a family. I wish Lego would make more of these board games, as they really are fun!!

Oh my goodness, this game was so fun and challenging! The challenge level was just right and pushed our family to think while building. The boards were high quality and all pieces were included in the box. I highly recommend to any family that loves LEGO and STEM. Well worth the price point.

When you open the box the instructions seem like it would be a little much for a 10 year old. The game seems complicated, but there are just several steps for each turn. Once you understand the steps once the game not difficult, and it really is fun. My biggest complaint is, unless there are only 2 players, there are not enough Lego pieces for the game to go on for more than a few rounds. We have a bunch of pieces upstairs in my sons room that we could supplement the game with, but the game really should come with more.

Wasn’t sure if we would like this game because we have tried some other Lego games in the past and they were not the best. But we love this one! Building the staircases is really fun and it’s just a really great family game.

My kids were super excited to get a Lego game, turned out to be a great family fun. Challenging and entertaining enough for adults. It is time consuming to set up and clean up. A lot of small parts. Also takes a little bit to understand the rules. (at first all the rules seem overwhelming) we had to start playing in order to understand how it all works. Instructions are easy to read and understand. Once you learn how to play it’s a lot of fun, perfect for kids seven and up. Every time you play, ends up with different results so it’s challenging and interesting to play. Great gift for a LEGO fan.

Honestly this game should be for 2 players, preferably patient adults. There are a lot of details and nuances on how building/resource collecting/point calculations work, the board is pretty small, and you don't have that many resources to share. But once you understand how to play, the end result can be pretty fun and cool. I think this game could have been easily improved by having quick reference cards on gameplay that each player can keep in front of them, as well as individual building resources in a distinct color and tray for each player instead of shared resources. I know that the mixed color building resources make for a more cohesive looking palace, but it can be hard to be sure which pieces are yours if you need to undo something mid-turn and also when you are calculating points. This could also allow the game to go on for a more satisfying length of time because you wouldn't run out of resources as quickly, especially with more players. Perhaps game end could simply be when it's not possible to build anymore from the ground level so your palace gets to fill the whole board. The concept of the butterfly and frog are pretty neat - the butterfly constantly moves around up top, while the frog stays low to the forest floor without too much movement, just like in real life. However, it is easy to forget to handle the monkey and butterfly properly as there are so many other things you are already calculating and keeping track of each turn. Finally, there are clear quality control issues. We definitely got a returned game as most of the pieces came stored in Ziploc bags. Ironically, only the green decoration pieces bag was intact and unopened which means that whoever tried out the game before us gave up before getting to that point in the game. Our game was also somehow missing 1 column but had 3 extra bricks. It's not the end of the world as we can just treat those 3 bricks as the missing column, and it seems like bricks usually run out faster than columns anyway so it helps make the game go on for longer. Lastly, we were initially very confused by the instructions until we realized the 2 folded pieces of paper that constitute the instructions were not stapled together so we had been reading the steps out of order.

One of our favorite family games.