Matthew BaileyOver the last year or two, kids versions of board games have become massive business, and Splendor Kids is one of the latest examples of a popular adult game getting a child friendly version. As a few of you have requested, we are going to take a look at it and tell you what we think.
The general idea is that you start the game by laying out the board. One thing to say straight away, which I really like, is that because the board is modular, you can change the length of it. This means you can make the game shorter or slightly longer, which is always a nice touch.
You pick a colour and choose a meeple to represent you. The aim of the game is to travel through the kingdom, passing towns and villages, by paying resources to move up the board in order to reach the castle.
On your turn you can do one of two things. You can take resources, and when doing that you can either take three different ones, two of the same, or one gold coin which acts as a wild card. Or you can pay some resources in order to move. If you move into a village, you get another go, and if you are in the middle section and playing with the advanced rules, you get to look at a Village Tycoon card which gives you some sort of effect. If you land in a town, you take a town token, which gives you a permanent upgrade that provides a resource you can always use without collecting it. As you go through the game this makes your future turns a little easier, and from a strategy point of view you can plan your route so you need fewer resources as you progress. This works quite well. I would probably have liked to see a few more town tokens so the difficulty ramps up a little more sharply.
That is basically how the game plays. You move along the board, collect resources, and try to make the best possible decisions. The whole experience comes down to two things, making efficient choices so you minimise downtime, and choosing the best path based on which town tokens you already have. There is also a small amount of player interaction because the resources are quite limited. If you see that another player desperately needs a specific token, you can take all of that type so they cannot advance without going for a wild card. We did not find ourselves doing this very often, but if you really wanted to play competitively, that option is there.
The presentation values are very high. The board is really nice, the tray that displays all of the tokens is great, and the box insert is surprisingly good. It actually keeps everything snug for storage, even within the tray, which I did not believe until I put it all back together. The artwork is lovely and the overall production is excellent.
Now, is it actually a really good game? We played a couple of games and one ended in a draw and the other was extremely close. I think most games will be close unless people make very poor decisions, but that is not necessarily a problem. We had a good time with it. I cannot see us coming back to it regularly, but for younger kids who are less familiar with set collection and resource management games, this could be a big hit. It is definitely a good way to introduce children to these mechanics, and that is where this game really shines. If you want to move your kids on to regular Splendor, especially younger children, this is a great stepping stone. It gently introduces the idea of managing and taking resources.
It is different enough from regular Splendor that I do not think they fill the same niche, and you definitely could not recreate this experience by buying normal Splendor and simplifying it. It really is its own game, but it introduces the core ideas nicely and it is good fun. As such, it is definitely one I would put on my recommendation list if you are looking for a simple yet enjoyable game for young kids to introduce these types of mechanics.
