As a newbie to the LEGO world, having made my first LEGO Bouquet earlier this year, I was really intrigued by the idea of a LEGO board game coproduced by LEGO Group and Asmodee’s Dotted Games Studio! The first LEGO board game in over a decade, designed by David Gordon and TAM (Tin Aung Myaing), Monkey Palace is a jungle-themed game of light strategy tailored for two to four players that incorporates both collaborative and competitive elements.
Players must strategically work together to construct the Monkey Palace while competing for the highest brick income and points, all under the watchful gaze of the Monkey. The palace gradually takes form, resulting in an impressive construction using LEGO elements that we all know and love. The iconic LEGO System in Play means that each time the Monkey Palace is played, the building experience and final construction are totally unique and different.
What’s in the box?
Monkey Palace comes with one 1 LEGO® plate 32×32, 231 LEGO® bricks, 67 Monkey Cards, 14 Bonus Cards, 3 Trophy Cards, 4 Player Boards, 2 Ground Maps with maps on both sides, 1 Brick Tray, and 1 Rule Book. Overall the quality of the pieces are solid and for anyone who has ever played with LEGO, the blocks are packaged like any other kit with the LEGO pieces in plastic bags. The cards are pretty small so they don’t take up too much space and everything fits neatly in the box. Just be careful when packing the pieces up at the end of gameplay so you don’t lose any.
How’s it play?
Monkey Palace is all about building the best staircases with an aim to score as many Banana points as possible. The higher your staircase, and the more arches that you use, the more points you get. The game ends when there are no building blocks, which goes by really fast because of something called recurring deliveries.
To set up the game, place the four corner bricks on the baseplate (we left them on during clean-up), choose one of the two double-sided Ground Maps and place it on the base plate. Then, place one brick and two arches of any color on top of the Ground Map. This is your first staircase, and at the end you’ll place a gold decoration brick at the end.
Each turn will progress similarly, with a decoration brick added to the very end peg of the last brick that ends the staircase that turn. Place the monkey on the monkey trophy card (butterfly and frog are micro expansions), and set the Monkey Cards up in three rows. First, the cards that show 1-6 monkeys on the top left and light green make one row. Under that is the darker green cards 3-5, and the last row is the gold cards 3-5.
Hand out player boards going clockwise with the first player board going to the person who last ate a banana. Then grab the depicted bricks on the back of the player board before starting Monkey Palace.
Turns go as quickly or as slowly as it takes you to create staircases and finish the 8 steps in a turn. First, you must build and decorate your staircase using the pieces that you have. Staircases must begin on the ground map, always move in an ascending manner (cannot come back down), must be fully supported, and they have to attach to the palace. They can turn 90 degrees in between the next level but arches cannot be placed on arches!
You also can’t place pieces on the two middle knobs of the arch pieces. Finally, place the colored decoration based on where your first piece started (light or dark green, or golden).
Now, count the number of arches that you have, and see if your decoration is the highest of that color in the palace. You’ll receive one credit per arch, and one credit for having the highest decoration block to use to buy as many Monkey Cards that you can based on the number of credits of that credit cost and of the color that you started with. If you don’t use all your credits, you lose them.
If the card has a lightning symbol next to one of the brick symbols, you take those pieces one time. Symbols might be divided by a slash (small piece / arch) and in that case you pick one of the two pieces to take. Then flip the card over and place it in one of the four spaces on your player board. Then take your recurring delivery on your board, and any of your cards on the game board. As the Monkey Palace progresses, you’ll accumulate more cards and have to decide what to cover up.
If a part of your built staircase has a height of at least five bricks (NOT including the arch, the tall brick is three bricks high), then you also take a bonus card worth 4 (!) Banana points. Finally, if you triggered any trophy card on your turn, take the card. For the base game, this would be if the gold decoration is highest. In that case, you can take the monkey and put him wherever you want to block an opponent. At the end, whoever has the card gets the bonus points.
You can also gain two points for having the butterfly trophy card and place the butterfly on the highest decoration of each color as the turns continue. The frog is also optional, but you can use him to take an extra column from the brick tray and must place him on the open end of the first brick that you placed on the Ground Map. If you end the game with the frog card, though, you lose three points!
Gameplay continues until all the bricks are gone of one kind for a player to take. At that point, the remainder of the round occurs, then everyone counts how many banana points they have from their monkey cards and trophy cards. Whoever has the most wins!
The verdict?
I mentioned at the start of the review that I am new to LEGO. Growing up, my parents just bought us regular degular bricks, and I have been enjoying learning just how expansive the LEGO world is. I really enjoyed playing Monkey Palace and know that I’ll play it pretty regularly. Every single build is different, and you never quite know what your opponent(s) are going to build until it’s all said and done. I can’t speak to how this holds up against the older LEGO board games, but this seems like a great first (re)entry into the game world!
Just be careful not to break pieces when removing them. Especially if you’re going to change your mind mid-build (which is allowed) as I did and then almost knock the whole thing over. Whoops.
The quality of Monkey Palace is great, packaged as you’d expected from a LEGO product, but the rulebook could use more examples of just how to place staircases, especially since this is geared both at hobby gamers and families. When I first opened the rulebook, I liked that everything was clearly numbered, but I kept looking for examples of how to build instead of examples of how not to build.
Examples are particularly useful for the first game, and for kids looking at how to think ahead when building higher staircases as the game progresses.
I also think that gameplay should go until all the brick pieces are gone. One, it means the palace looks way cooler when it’s finished. Two, it forces players to strategize once they realize the brick pieces are slowly disappearing. Do you aim for a staircase of a certain height to then get Monkey Cards based on what is on the card for piece delivery?
Or do you just go for the highest possible, because 6 credits or more nets you 10 banana points? Of course for kids, you can ignore my rule breaking shenanigans, but for adults playing with adults or older kids, this is a great way to add another level of strategy to the game.
Monkey Palace does not have a solo play option, but honestly I can see myself just pulling all the pieces out to build with no real aim in mind just to see how the palace can look. There are endless possibilities, and I can’t wait to play on the other Ground Map.
I do hope future games have more colors and pieces, since one of the best parts of the LEGO world is just how many colorful and unique pieces there are. The frog is actually a piece (in a different color) that is part of the gorgeous cherry blossom tree set!
You can grab a copy now at Amazon for $39.99 and at your FLGS.
Images and review copy courtesy of Asmodee
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