Monki Board Game Review

Having games that my younger kids can play is a huge plus, and Monki fits the need. This two player game only takes about 15 minutes to play, and can be setup and taught in less than 5 minutes! Are you ready to search some temples for loot to fill out your board? Let’s dive in!

How to Play

In Monki, players are battling to collect 8 resources – a blue and green variant of a banana, grapes, onions, and pineapple – or collecting 4 golden resources. On their turn, a player will move there Monki in any direction as far as they like. Then, as long as there are no obstacles (the other player, an empty temple space), a player can then begin flipping over tiles (jars). By the rules, players can flip over jars directly in their line of site, in their row and column.

This is a push-your-luck experiment – if you turn over two icons of the same type, you instantly end your turn and all flipped over tiles are placed on the nearest statue. Once a player decides to stop flipping over jars, or if they run out, they can place any flipped up icon on their player board. If they flipped an item they already have, the item is instead placed on the nearest statue.

Items on statues can be claimed by playing one of 4 ruby tokens that each player has from the start of the game. Once a specific ruby item is flipped, a player can, instead of flipping over jars, chose to claim one item from a statue that matches the ruby they turned over.

The first person to collect all 8 regular tokens, or all 4 golden tokens, is the winner.

Is it Good for Young Kids?

Since it is so easy to teach and to play, I found this to be an excellent game for my eight year old and I to play. Recommended for 7+, I think even younger kids – with the help of a parent perhaps – could easily find a way to make this game work.

The strategy is deep enough to teach younger kids some skills for playing harder board games in the future, but it is never overly complicated to frustrate someone. As far as kids games go, this is one of the best!