KO Corral

As we approached half-term, all the boys were absolutely shattered, so we decided to play something a little less involved. That’s how we ended up playing “KO Corral”.

Now, I had fairly high hopes when I picked this one up. Essentially, it’s a shooting gallery crossed with something like “Dice Flick”, with a few stats and powers thrown in. Nothing groundbreaking, but I was expecting a fun little game we could enjoy together—maybe even one that Henry could join in with now that he’s getting more into playing as a family.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Setting up the game is actually fine. You clip everything together, and the box itself is used as part of the construction. It’s a clever idea, but I do have a small gripe—the artwork is lovely, but the inside of the box is black and white, which makes everything feel a little unfinished. A bit of colour would have made the whole thing look much nicer. Still, I could live with that.

Once your “KO Corral” is set up, it’s time to position your launcher. You do this using the Sun Track, which is essentially a measuring tool to determine how far back you should place your flicking area. Sounds good in theory, but in practice, the Sun Track is 38cm long, meaning you need a table at least a metre and a half in length just to fit everything properly. That’s ridiculous.

You could, in theory, play on the floor, but because of how the flicking works, it’s not exactly practical. So, a massive table it is.

The game works by rolling a dice to determine your action, with a system that feels a bit like “King of Tokyo” (or any dice-drafting game, really). The actions include:

• Outlaw – Draw a new outlaw and place them in your shooting gallery.
• Bounty Hunter – Place an opponent’s bounty hunter in the gallery.
• Snake – Does nothing (joy).
• Gallop – Moves you along the Gallop track, a key part of winning.
• Bullet – Let’s you take a golden dice for shooting.

The goal is to move three bars to the top, which means knocking out enemies while also rolling Gallop icons to progress.

And this is where everything fell apart.

Now, I’ve played a lot of dexterity games involving flicking, and I generally enjoy them. “Dice Flick” is a great example (and actually, I haven’t reviewed it since the early days of Little Board Gamers, so I should probably do that soon). But the flicking in “KO Corral” is an absolute nightmare.

The problem? The distance you have to flick from combined with the design of the dice. These dice don’t just flick—they roll, meaning they’re incredibly hard to control. No matter how hard I tried—whether flicking with the power of Thor’s finger or using a gentle touch—I could barely knock over any outlaws or bounty hunters. Even when I hit them square-on with the kind of flick that would make a mate at school cry if you caught his ear, they still wouldn’t go down.

Jack and Toby found it even harder. Toby didn’t even have the power to flick a dice a metre across the table with enough force to make an impact. I genuinely don’t think it was physically possible to do it. Jack didn’t manage to knock a single one over, and we played for ages, trying different approaches. It was just impossibly difficult, to the point where it sucked all the fun out of the game.

After 15 minutes of frustration, even after moving everything closer and outright cheating, we gave up. It just doesn’t work.

The components are a bit all over the place. The box is nice, and the artwork is lovely. The flicker itself is actually quite decent. But the dice? Terrible. They’re cheap, blank dice with flimsy stickers. Worse still, the sharp edges on the dice make flicking them uncomfortable (and probably damaging over time). The insert is pointless and as flimsy as they come.

In case it isn’t obvious—I was thoroughly disappointed by “KO Corral”. I wasn’t expecting it to be a masterpiece, just a quick, fun game we could enjoy alongside something like “Dice Flick”. Instead, it’s frustrating, near-impossible to play properly, and ultimately just not fun.

This is an extremely rare “definitely don’t buy” from me. Avoid it.