Base price: $40.
2 – 4 players.
Play time: ~45 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 3
Full disclosure: A review copy of Monkey Palace was provided by Asmodee USA.
So this one’s going to be cool, regardless. LEGO and Asmodee collaborated to start what (I think) is a new line of board games, and the first one is Monkey Palace! I’m excited to see where these lead as a big LEGO fan, so, I’m gonna just dive right into this one.
In Monkey Palace, well, the unthinkable has happened. The palace has collapsed, and you need to rebuild it to earn Monkey Credits and, obviously, banana points. Everyone’s got their eye on the top prize though, so while you’re collaboratively building LEGOs, it’s still a competitive game. So take cards, earn income, and use that income to restore the palace and gain those coveted banana points. Who will end up top banana?
Contents
Setup
Setup is pretty easy. You’re going to set the board in the center:
There should be four possible board layouts. Take one and place it in the center, securing it with the four green corner-shaped bricks:
One player can mostly do the rest of the setup, so the other players can mess with the Decoration Blocks:
Other than the Monkey, the Frog, and the Butterfly (Trophy Cards), the Decoration Blocks can be placed everywhere outside of the board card.
Have fun, make it nice. The players should each get a player board, and then, each player should flip to the back of their player board and take the starting pieces they’re assigned from the supply:
Set up the cards by separating them by color and Monkey Credits cost. If they’re the same cost, order them by Banana Points (lowest on top).
Set up the starting temple with two arches, a block, and a gold Decoration Block, and the player with the 1 on their player board starts!
Gameplay
Not a super complicated one this time, friends. Your goal is to rebuild Monkey Palace and get some Banana Points along the way.
On your turn, you must build a staircase that connects to the current Monkey Palace in some way, through some consistently-ascending set of blocks, columns, and arches. You must always start from the bottom on the play board. You may build on top of existing structures, but no vertical gaps are allowed. If you build a staircase that includes five or more bricks’ worth of height (not counting arches), you also gain a bonus card.
Once you’ve finished building, place a Decoration Block matching the color of the space your staircase started in, then count the number of arches. Add an extra point to that total if your Decoration Block is the highest of its kind, and you’ve got your Monkey Credits for the turn! You can buy any number of cards from the market so long as their total cost is less than or equal to your total Monkey Credits. Once you do, take any immediate (lighting bolt) pieces and then place the cards on your player board, face-down. You can stack them if you want.
Collect your income pieces next! If you can’t, the game ends at the conclusion of this round and you do not get another turn. Tough!
Finally, you can potentially take Trophy Cards:
- Monkey: If you placed a Gold Decoration Block this turn, you move the Monkey to any end knob of an arch. You also get the Monkey Trophy Card! If you have it at the end of the game, it’s worth 2 Banana Points.
- Butterfly: If you placed the highest decoration block of any type, you collect and place the Butterfly Token on it (and take the Trophy Card!). It’s also worth 2 Banana Points.
- Frog: if you take this one, you get a free column piece. That’s nice. You place the frog on the lowest end knob of your staircase. If you have the Frog Trophy Card (which you also get) at the end of the game, it’s worth -3 points.
Play continues until the blocks run out! Tally up Banana Points and the player with the most wins!
Player Count Differences
Not a huge amount, though I would expect scores to be higher at lower player counts. You basically have the same number of bricks available over all player counts, so, naturally, you individually play more bricks with fewer players. More bricks means more Monkey Credits, and more Monkey Credits should lead to more Banana Points. That’s all well and good. I think with more players, you see a bit more of a gradual growth of the temple (since everyone’s income grows more slowly), whereas with fewer players the temple kind of shoots up. It’s a matter of preference, though you get to do more direct effect influence with fewer players, so I tend to prefer that lower player count.
Strategy
- Income is the name of the game, here. You want to be getting a bunch of pieces every turn, but you need to balance that against the pieces you can actually play. Having ten arches is nice, yes, but if you don’t have any blocks, you’re unlikely to be able to actually make those arches work for you so that you can end up with ten (likely eleven) Monkey Credits. Try to balance your income so that you’re consistently getting stuff you can place.
- You can buy high-value cards, but they tend to provide no income, so you’ve gotta balance those things out. This is where getting 9 Monkey Credits is amazing, for instance: you can buy a 6 card (and get 10 Banana Points), and then you can cover that with a 3 card and still get your income. Or, you get a 5 and a 4 and cover any empty spaces you have. Both are valid strategies, but it depends on where you are in the game.
- It’s pretty tough to block with the Monkey. You can’t completely cut off your opponent, but you can have some success if you’re playing with the Butterfly potentially preventing them from getting the highest Decoration Block. That said, that largely depends on you having a pyramid-type construction (one highest point) and not a castle-type construction (multiple spires of approximately the same height).
- Sometimes passing on a mediocre turn in order to save pieces for a better turn is good. It may not make a huge difference if you get two or three Monkey Credits (depending on what the cards look like), but that extra arch with another round of income may be what you need to lock down a four or five Monkey Credit card (or maybe even a six!). Just plan a bit ahead.
- Getting column tokens can be pretty clutch. They’re three blocks stacked vertically; you can use that to start getting Bonus Cards, especially if they’re part of your income.
- Once you can, you really want to be getting that Bonus Card every turn. It’s 4 points! Try taking scenic routes and messing around with making tall columns. Just keep in mind that that burns a ton of blocks.
- The only time it’s worth taking the Frog is if you can use it to take your first Bonus Card. If you weren’t going to be able to get it and the Frog helps you get it, that’s (4 – 3) a net 1 Banana Point, which isn’t nothing. Plus, if your opponents see you net 1 Banana Point, they may try to do the same thing with the Frog, taking it (and the negative points it carries) from you.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- The aesthetic of this is really pleasant. LEGO has done a lot to really get their humor style and presentation style down pat, and this is consistent. It reminds me of growing up playing LEGO Island, only to realize that my computer fundamentally did not meet the system requirements for LEGO Island, and therefore LEGO Island ran terribly. Still had fun, though. It’s a very physical kind of humor in the rules, and it works. I also like the color choices! Very jungle vibes.
- I love the things that let other players participate during setup, like the Decoration Blocks. One player sorts the cards and the others get to decorate the board’s border. It’s very charming and it leads the game to look different with every play, which I like. It doesn’t affect gameplay at all, but it cultivates an aesthetic.
- I really like how this game has players balance engine-building with scoring points. Mechanically, the game is very solid; I was impressed. It’s a great way to ramp up on more general engine-building strategy (“how do I get my income high enough that I can consistently get Bonus Cards”) through one of the most fun building things imaginable: LEGOs.
- The monkeys are silly. It’s just … it’s a goofy concept for a game. The palace fell over? Sure, why not.
- Monkey Credits and Banana Points are also silly. I really like trying to teach the game while very solemnly selling how serious the idea of Banana Points are. I also make fun of players who mix them up. It’s all serious business over here.
- Teardown isn’t too bad, either. Turns out people really enjoy disassembling LEGOs, sometimes with extreme prejudice. So I usually let them work out whatever they’re going through emotionally while I put the cards away. It works out well for everyone.
- I like games that give players a sense of accomplishment, and the LEGO elements of this really let the game pop. You really do build a very cool temple by the end of the game, and it’s always different. I think Ross Miller over at Polygon hits the nail on the head: you almost want to leave the game up after you finish playing just like any other completed LEGO set. It makes me interested to see what a more complex version of Monkey Palace could produce.
- The different boards create very different shapes, which is a lot of fun. Trying the more hourglass-shaped board forced a very pyramid-shaped temple to emerge, whereas the square boards gave us multiple spires. They’re both fun in their own ways, though I’d love to see more options in the future.
Mehs
- There are a few spots in the rules that are a little ambiguous, but we can largely guess our way to the right answer. The main one is that one could interpret Bonus Cards being given out whenever you place an arch on top of at least five blocks, though it seems more reasonable that you have to place all five of those blocks (at least) to get the Bonus Card. I think it’s one of those things that normal people take for granted but after playing so many board games I just see ambiguity where it’s not as present.
- It also would be nice if the base were a bit heavier or less prone to sliding, for the sake of adding pieces on. It’s solved by having one player hold it, but the board can slide a lot during play, which can be frustrating.
Cons
- The number of fairly-small pieces are going to be a problem, especially since the game depends a fair bit on piece count. You’re likely going to lose a block or a gold Decoration Block at some point; just make peace with it, I suppose. It’s just hard to know for sure, since there are enough that I don’t really want to count every game to make sure I haven’t lost any. There are just enough to make that laborious.
Overall: 8.5 / 10
Overall, I think Monkey Palace is a delight. It requires a bit of framing and direction, though, the game, and that’s also interesting. To be particular, I don’t think that a board gamer playing this is suddenly going to get excited about LEGO; I think that a major strength of LEGO is the self-sufficiency of building a thing that’s either completely from your imagination or following steps to build something very recognizable. Here, you don’t really do either; you’re just kind of using a few types of LEGO blocks to build upwards. It’s clever, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think it necessarily speaks to the creativity or excitement you might find in a standard LEGO set. Instead, I think that you’ll see LEGO enthusiasts that might get more excited about board gaming playing this, because it takes a lot of the satisfying parts of LEGOs (the regularity and consistency, the satisfying click noise, and the general joy of making stuff) and applies that within a board game context. That, actually, I think it does really well. I particularly like that the game is simple overall, but lets players work out strategies on their own: how do I get enough bricks to be consistently scoring points? How do I balance taking high-value cards against getting enough income to constantly get my bonuses? How do I block players taking my high-value bonuses so I can keep the points for the end of the game? These aren’t thinks that come up in LEGO sets, but framing them via some fun LEGO pieces and the building and gradual construction of a temple I think can get players pretty hooked. Even if you don’t get the strategy, really, just building the stairs on your turn is pretty fun. Granted, the tiny pieces are still easy to lose, but it wouldn’t be LEGO without them. This makes me excited to see future collaborations in the board game space from LEGO; I’d love to try something a bit more complex and cooperative, next. If you’re a LEGO fan (or buying for one), you love building stairways, or you just can’t get enough Monkey Credits, I’d definitely recommend checking Monkey Palace out! I’ve really enjoyed it.
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