Matthew BaileyUnlike most of the other games we have look at this week Minecraft Builders & Biomes is not really a game designed for kids and is definitely that little bit more complex but it is an excellent game and could happily sit without the Minecraft license. It can best be described as “a bit like Kingdomino with a 3D spatial block puzzle thrown in… and some monster fighting and weapon collecting.”
You start with a 4×4 grid of cards with weapons around the edge. Players move in the spaces between cards and stop on the corners of 4 cards. On your turn, you can do 2 of 5 possible actions:
- Move 0, 1 or 2 spaces and turn over all building cards you stop by (some will be buildings, others are mobs to fight).
- Take a single weapon card and add it to your deck.
- Take 2 wooden blocks off the cube tower – but only ones visible from three sides – which are used to…
- Build a building you’re adjacent to.
- Fight a monster.
The goal is to earn experience points by defeating monsters and constructing buildings that meet certain criteria.
The wooden block tower is a brilliant centrepiece, and the way it links to scoring is a real highlight. Once you fully clear a layer of blocks, a scoring round is triggered:
- Round 1: Score for your largest connected biome (with rarer ones like snow earning more points).
- Round 2: Score for your largest connected building material (wood, stone, etc).
- Round 3: Score for your largest connected building type (farm, house, etc).
It forces you to think several moves ahead and adapt your strategy as the game unfolds. It’s a really clever mechanic — one I’d love to see used in a future Kingdomino spin-off.
Combat is a simple deck draw: flip your top 3 weapon cards and check if the hearts shown beat the monster’s health. Some monsters give you end-game bonuses or extra actions, and weapon cards can also give extra powers.
Jack and I absolutely adored this. It’s the sort of game that feels like it should be way too complex for kids — but when broken down, it really isn’t. It’s full of tactical choices and satisfying pay-offs. Toby gave it a good go but still finds the layered scoring and long-term planning a bit of a stretch. That said, he’s always up for joining in — and I think with one or two more plays, he’ll start clicking with it too.
Component Quality is good but for a slightly more expensive games it could have been more. The wooden cube tower is great — chunky and tactile — but the rest is a bit flimsy, especially the character standees. It would have been amazing to have some lovely Minecraft miniatures to add a bit more wow-factor to the table.
Still, for a licensed game, this is way better than it has any right to be. Whether or not you’re into the video game, Minecraft: Builders & Biomes is a genuinely brilliant board game. It’s strategic, satisfying, and just plain fun — and it’s become a firm family favourite here and alongside its little brother that we reviewed earlier in the week is probably still the best Minecraft board game albeit one of the oldest.
