Oppression Aware Podcast, Fairy Tales, and Games

This mini-review was created for The Nifty Nerds’ list of The Best Games for 2 Players.

I love cooperative games, and one of my absolute favorite cooperative boardgames is Castle Panic. In it the players cooperate to defend their castle against a horde of monsters (goblins, orcs, and ogres) that are attacking it. The different areas around the castle are color coded and divided up into different distance ranges. The players draw cards that they use to attack monsters in specific areas around the castle and to boost the castle’s defenses. At the end of each player’s turn, the monsters advance. The goal of the game is to survive the horde with at least one castle tower intact.

The ability to trade one card per turn allows for a modest amount of strategy which creates a bit of challenge to work through together without becoming overwhelming for those who are less strategically minded. Also, there is just enough randomness and chaos in the game to keep it exciting without making it too hard to win. I’ve also enjoyed the expansion set that gives more magic and additional monster types, though it does add some complexity.

In my experience, this game is the most fun with a small group of 2 or 3 players. This is because having fewer players allows each player to have more cards in their hands, they get to take actions more often, and it is easier to work out strategy together. I don’t have much personal experience with children, but I suspect older children would enjoy this game.

I’d recommend this game to people who want a fun, cooperative, social game with a little bit of strategy and chaos that works best for smaller groups.

Photograph of Castle Panic being played. In the foreground is the top half of a hand of cards. In the background is a setup game board with cards and token around it. In the top left corner is an image of the Castle Panic box with monsters and human warriors fighting in front of a stone tower. A text banner over the top reads “Strategize together to defend your Castle from the Monsters.”

Here I’d like to add a rough accessibility assessment:

Because the color coding on the cards is not accompanied by any differences in shape or symbol, I suspect that the color coding system in this game would not be accessible without modification to anyone with color blindness.

In addition, this game does have important visual components that would require modification to make it tactile enough to be fully accessible to those with severe visual impairments.

There are dice, cards, and tokens on the board to manipulate and multiple manipulations are required each turn. However, the sections of the board are fairly large, and these are things that can be handled by a second party.

I’d assess this game as being a cognitive medium difficulty, with only a little bit of strategy possible. This difficulty increases with the expansion set.

For those who are comfortable with the idea of killing monsters, the cooperative nature of this game will make it more emotionally accessible than many games.

As far as representation goes, the defenders on the cards are all white men.

Tags: accessibility, boardgame, boardgame review, castle panic, defend, game, mini review, monster, monsters, review