Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
Let’s cut right to the chase: Monkey Palace, a 2024 release from LEGO and Dotted Games, is a must if you check any of the following boxes:
- You like LEGOs, or just enjoy games that double as building toys.
- You have kids who love LEGO-themed anything: the brand, the building, the movies, etc.
- You are struggling to find games that really let a child express their creativity, in an environment where you want to subtly teach competition in a safe space.
- You like city-building games where you can scale down from constructing a metropolis to building a silly fort made of LEGO blocks.
- You like monkeys.
Oh, Well If There’s Monkeys, Then…
Monkey Palace is a 2-4 player family-weight strategy game. Players use LEGO bricks in three different styles to slowly build a structure in the middle of a green LEGO playmat. After placing new pieces on a turn, players collect cards used to build an income engine that will supply future turns, and when at least one of the three brick style supplies is exhausted, everyone takes an equal number of turns and scores are added up based on the value of the cards in that income engine, along with a few other bonuses.
There’s more to it than that, but not really…or, certainly not for a child. The rulebook is a bit dense, so after watching a teach video our family had the rules down pat. After taking one full round of turns, everyone in my household knew how to legally add pieces to the palace.
And this is where Monkey Palace really shines. Creativity is on full display here, as players try to math out building new bridges to move up in the palace, and adding scoring elements that trigger a diverse mix of pieces into the engine. Just using the term “running the engine” was a blast for my kids, so for anyone looking to inspire kids towards initial plays in the Eurogame efficiency space, Monkey Palace is not a bad way to live.
Watching my kids—ages 8 and 11—study the board state to figure out where to build and how to use as many pieces as possible was awesome. The final state of the palace was always interesting and I’m shocked to say that my favorite thing about the visuals here is the design choice to use four different shades of beige and brown for the bricks. It really does make the final structure look like a deserted jungle palace for animals and I love that!
A bit like my only issue with the similarly interesting visuals created by the Ares release Builders of Sylvan Dale, Monkey Palace works a lot better if you have a “lazy Susan” equivalent to hold your palace board. That’s because players will want to see the entire board at every angle. I’m 6’1”, so sitting at a normal table sometimes made it tough for me to see the game at the proper angles to determine how many single-height bricks I needed for my next turn.
The box says Monkey Palace should take about 45 minutes to play, and that’s what I saw in my plays as well. I think that’s 10-15 minutes too long, especially in a higher player count game where other players are just watching their opponents build. As a result, I don’t recommend Monkey Palace at four players, especially if more of your players are younger kids. The downtime can lead to a lot of kids tapping the table waiting for their turn to come around.
One other gripe—the storage solution didn’t quite work for me. I wish a container with a lid for the bricks had been included, because the in-game solution for Monkey Palace is otherwise great. But when packing up the game, you likely will bag the pieces, as opposed to just leaving them in the storage bin. In this way, I’ve already reminded my kids to always place this game back in the gaming closet flat on its bottom so that I don’t have to clean up a mess each time I whip out the game.
LEGO My LEGO
Monkey Palace is a great time at a table, especially in a world where I continue to try getting my kids off screens. I’m lucky that my kids have an affinity for LEGO products, so finding an audience at home was a slam dunk.
Monkey Palace is not perfect…in fact, I’m not sure how many more times my kids will play the game Monkey Palace so much as play with the bricks from Monkey Palace. My son is already looking to integrate his LEGO Star Wars toys with this game. The box now sits with our larger general brick sets of LEGOs near the game closet.
My wife and I have used Monkey Palace to recharge the LEGO engine here at home. Prior to the arrival of Monkey Palace, our family had gone from daily LEGO play to monthly, sometimes quarterly LEGO play. When we started doing review plays of Monkey Palace, my kids were back in a weekly mode with LEGO toys, and one of our six-foot foldable tables is once again being used to keep LEGOs in full view in our family room.
If you have kids—kids of any age, really—Monkey Palace is a must. And for those of you looking for a fun time at the table tied to creative strategic thinking, Monkey Palace is definitely worth a look.
Monkey Palace details
- Designer: David Gordon (I), TAM
- Artists: Matthieu Martin
- Publishers: Boardgame Space, CoolPlay, Dotted Games, Gém Klub Kft., Hobby Japan, Kaissa Chess & Games, LEGO, Lord of Boards, Rebel Sp. z o.o.
- Release Date: 2024
- Player count : 2 - 4
- Age range : 10+
- Time range : 45 minutes
- Mechanism(s): End Game Bonuses, Hot Potato, Income, Open Drafting, Pattern Building, Pieces as Map, Three Dimensional Movement, Tile Placement
- BGG Geek Rating: 7.22434 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 3.5.
- More articles about Monkey Palace.
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