Fireside Games FSG01013 My First Castle Panic, Multicoloured

Product Information

Matching the shapes and colors is simple, and the icons that represent the special monsters’ powers are clear.

They watched and waited as you built your castle and trained your soldiers, but now they've gathered their army and are marching out of the woods. This is hardly a deal breaker, but for a game with a target demographic of children ages 4-7, I would have thought the cardboard would be a little tougher. What this game does so well is teach children to cooperate together to try and win, by sharing cards and thoughts about which monsters should take priority and in doing so it teaches some really basic elements of strategy. While they are too young for Castle Panic, Fireside Games has now addressed that with My First Castle Panic. At the end of each turn all the monsters remaining on the board move along and a new monster is drawn, some which have a few simple abilities like jumping to the front or moving all the other monsters along.Roll a dice, move the number of squares and move onto the next player etc etc this one has a bit more to it. When thinking about what games to first play with my son, I was drawn to My First Castle Panic for a number of reasons, firstly it was a co-operative game meaning we would share in victory or defeat together and secondly although there is some luck in terms of the cards and monsters drawn, I wanted a game that would help him to learn basic strategy. Maybe some house rules, like everyone starting with one of the special boot cards (which allow you to remove anyone from the board and put them back into the bad guy stack) could help provide more strategy and prevent the awful luck that can plague games like this.

On their turn each player draws a card, plays a card OR asks for help, moves the monsters, and draws another monster token. If the active player does not have a card they can use, they can ask for help, which allows another player to play a card in the active player’s place. The repeating shape icons give players multiple opportunities to knock off monsters, making it easier to stay afloat. The hardest thing for them to grasp was the special abilities of the monsters (and strategy), but the iconographic is pretty clear, and after a few games I didn’t have to help them with that anymore.

My usual barometer for kids games is whether I am bored to tears playing, and do my kids ask to play again after the game is over?