Restoration Games Key to The Kingdom, Blue

Product Information

We had a lot of fun with the early to mid game but toward the end it became apparent that the game was mechanically compromised. Once the Key treasure has been obtained, the only action other players can then take to get their hands on it is to use the game's board flipping mechanic. If this is used correctly all players not on the correct space loose all previously gathered treasure. Lean into using items! Use them to land on Events or to modify die rolls or whatever. Worst case, you can always refresh five of them with a Heroic Nap. Refreshing items is not as hard as it sounds. You can really burn through a few turns with each of them, hit up a few Events, and then refresh a chunk of them. There are even Companions who will refresh some of your items for free, which is nice. Don’t hold on to them for no reason; use them. I suspect there was initially a whole other folding level to the game and treasure combination initially planned. Although that may be wishful speculation.

The box is exactly the right size to hold the components – and the insert sorts everything nicely and protects the tabs that connect the two-piece main board. Despite its novel idea of a fold-out realm, the original was nonetheless beset by the usual limitations of the roll and move genre – a mechanic that feels especially dated today. But rather than do away with the mechanic altogether, the publishers have chosen to live up to their name and simply restore and revitalise it. Players will still be rolling a die on their turn, albeit with the option of modifying the result with one of their eight starting hero’s items. These range from +1/-1 lengths of rope to mighty +4/-4 swords, with other possibilities available through any magic items found. Once used, items become exhausted although the game offers plenty of opportunities for replenishing them, most notably through a ‘hero’s nap’. Key to the Kingdom is a restoration of the 1990 classic game. The new version features the classic hole-in-the-board mechanism to hop through portals and explore the Demon King’s domain. I generally recommend having all of your items before attempting a Key Adventure, but at least have the item that lets you skip part of the adventure! That’s bad planning, otherwise. Every Key Adventure has at least one basic starting item that will let you skip one of its challenges. Make sure that item is ready before you attempt it. It’s literally a freebie. On purpose.I think it’s a great closer for a group of gamers, a lovely family game for kids who want to play a fantasy game but aren’t old enough to dig into some of the epic quest games out there… and I’m glad it has a place on my gaming shelf. I’m looking forward to introducing it to my great-nieces and nephews as they get older – and I’ll be happy to play it with whoever asks.

This new version gives players greater control over the whims of the dice. You’ll use your collection of items to tweak your rolls. But make sure you have the right item ready when you go on an adventure to give you an easier path through. You’ll get magic items and companions along the way as well. It also adds a new endgame in which you need to face a series of mini-challenges to win the game. But we’re not here to talk about The Mushroom Eaters… instead, when one of our intrepid Key to the Kingdom heroes leaps into a whirlpool, a portion of the board either opens (if it’s closed) or closes (if it’s open), revealing or hiding portions of the kingdom. Anyone else on the moving portion of board is relegated to the Void spot (the hole) when it opens or the whirlpool when it closes. It doesn’t make the game last longer than the director’s cut of The Return of the King. (With 2-3 players, we finished in about 30 minutes. We ran just over an hour with five players.) There are a number of thoughtful touches to the design and production of Key to the Kingdom (which isn’t really a surprise coming from Restoration Games. As the kingdom’s not-so-mightiest heroes — Pitiless Pixie, Knovice Knight, Unique Unicorn, Merciless Mercenary, and Gnarled Gnome — you’ll go on adventures to gather the three pieces of the magic key, then hop through a portal to defeat the Demon King once and for all.Fast forward 32 years (yes, my wife & I are about to celebrate our thirty-second anniversary!) and the release of Restoration Games’ new edition of Key to the Kingdom, lovingly restored by Matthew O’Malley and Ben Rossett. It’s also very goofy, and the light comedy of the game is very cute. The game is silly, fundamentally. The images are goofy (not scary), and I think that will be engaging for folks. You can even read the fun flavor text on the cards, if that’s your thing. There’s probably a way to overlay some light roleplaying elements on top of this game, but that’s beyond my scope. You can really mess up another player’s plans by going into the Whirlpool and flipping the board right before they go on a Key Adventure. This is a real jerk move, but if you know what you’re doing, running to a Whirlpool and flipping the board can really mess another player up, if they were already planning and organizing cards and Companions for a Key Adventure. It basically resets that entire side of the board, so now they’re either in a void or a whirlpool and they might be nowhere near where they wanted to be, so that wastes at least a turn or two of theirs. I wouldn’t recommend doing this (again, mean), but I can’t deny that it works.

The variable amount of required table space can be a bit of a pain. I like the folding and the unfolding, but it does take up a lot of table. For my long dining room table? Fine. For my shorter photography table? Less so. So I did the photos in my dining room. You know how it goes. If you land on the Whirlpool, then you’re whisked away! If the board you’re on is folded, unfold it! If it’s unfolded, refold it! Place your character in the Whirlpool and take another turn. Your opponents are either moved into the Whirlpool (when refolded) or the Void (when unfolded). Should you have all three pieces of the key, you’re whisked to the Demon King’s castle! Place your token on any space in the courtyard and prepare for your last adventure! Since I can’t compare the two (except to say I like the new cover better), what follows is actually a review of what’s in the box now – and the fun we’ve had with it. So my question is this, was this once a far more complicated game that was dumbed down at a late stage in development to achieve a lower aged audience / higher sales?Generally, giving the Demon Die to the player who seems to be in the lead makes sense. They’ll occasionally get super-high rolls (there’s an 11, on there), but that’s a one in eight chance. There are two 0s, so hopefully it just junks up that player’s ability to move usefully around the board and slows them down for a bit so other players can catch up. I'm not a regular around these parts but I thought I would start here with my investigation and see if you guys have any ideas. You should be ready to start! Every player rolls their dice and the highest roller takes the first turn: Gameplay This is a bright, colorful game, and likely a fantastic choice for introducing younger players to a roll-and-move game. I think it works great for younger players without sacrificing interesting play. It’s always nice to see that, and I think the art lends itself well to being inviting to a variety of players. It’s a mix of fantasy and the fantastical, and I really like how the look of the game turned out. Plus, I like rolling dice for challenges, and there’s a lot of that.

Following on from the successful rejigs of Fireball Island and Dark Tower, Restoration Games set their sights on overhauling the 1990 fantasy classic The Key to the Kingdom. This family-friendly adventure game will thrust players into a whimsical world of childlike wonder, as they take on the roles of unlikely heroes competing to put an end to the fearsome Demon King. By travelling the lands in search of adventure, players will gradually assemble the titular key needed to storm the Demon King’s domain, ascend his imposing castle, and finally brave battle in the throne room. It doesn’t subject you to the whims of mercurial dice and random card flips. (Well, it does – but the game is designed with tools to mitigate those things.) So my game group and I recently got our hands on the unfolding game Key to the Kingdom. For anyone who hasn't seen it before, i recommend watching the advert, ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXtJTLN2bTA).

COMPONENTS

Once you get to the Demon King’s Adventure space, you can choose any face-up or face-down tile in the first available area. You roll, you modify, you try to beat that number (or meet it). Keep going until you’ve either failed or made it through all three challenges. Once you do, you fight the Demon King! You need to roll a 20, which is hard, on an 8-sided die. To help you out, you can modify the roll with all of your remaining available items. If you defeat the Demon King, you win! Player Count Differences