Castle Panic, from Fireside Games, is a surprisingly strategic cooperative game about not being eaten horribly by monsters.  In it, your job is to protect the castle from what seems like an endless onslaught of attackers.  It is a good introduction to cooperative games, and the different variant rules make for good replayability. 

The game board is laid out like a target, with the castle in the center as the bullseye.  Each cocentric ring is labeled as a particular range, starting (from the inside and going out) with the Swordsmen, right outside the castle, followed by Knights, Archers, and finally the Forest, where monsters originate.  The players’ goal is to kill the monsters before they reach the castle and wreak havoc.  But that’s easier said than done.  The castle consists of 6 towers, surrounded by 6 walls.  In order to reach the towers, the monsters will have to breach the wall.  If all 6 towers are destroyed before you run out of monsters, the players lose.  The board is also divided into 3 colored wedges, each of which is bisected, such that each ring consists of two red, two green, and two blue sections, each of which has at the core a wall and a tower.

The game begins with a few pre-selected monsters on the board, and at the end of every turn, two more are added at random from the stack of 49.  Monster tiles are triangular wedges with 1-3 hit points.  Cleverly, each monster’s current hit point total is indicated by the angle facing the castle, so whenever a baddie is wounded, he is turned to the next angle. 

On each player’s turn, they begin by drawing up to their maximum hand size (dependent on the number of players).  They may then choose to discard and draw one card, then trade one card with another player.  They then get to play any cards in their hand.  Most cards are a color, followed by a ring (swordsman, knight, or archer), which allows the player to wound one monster in the appropriate color at the appropriate range.  Some cards are heroes of a particular color, which count as any range.  Some cards allow a player to throw tar (preventing a monster from moving this turn), retrieve other cards, or fortify walls.  Additionally, there are two cards (Brick and Mortar) that can be used, but only in combination, to rebuild a destroyed wall.

After the player does as much as they can to stem the tide of monsters, the monsters move.  Each monster tile moves one ring closer to the castle.  A monster that reaches a castle wall destroys it, but doesn’t advance, and takes one point of damage to boot.  A monster that reaches a tower destroys it and takes a point of damage.  If a monster reaches the interior of the castle, they begin moving clockwise around it, destroying any tower they can reach (and taking one point of damage each time).  Because there are very few cards that can reach a monster inside the castle, players want to make sure they stop them as quickly as possible.

After monsters move, two new monster tiles are taken from the stack and played.  Most tiles are goblins (1 hit point), orcs (2 hit points), or trolls (3 hit points), and a die is rolled to determine which section of the Forest ring they enter play at.  However, there are other monster tiles as well, which can move all the monsters on the board, force players to discard cards of a particular type, or otherwise hinder the players.  Additionally, there are boss monsters which have special abilities when they enter play (such as healing all the monsters on the board, bringing in extra monsters, or moving all of the monsters).  Finally, there are giant boulders, which destroy any monsters they roll over, but don’t stop until they hit a castle tower or wall, which they then also destroy.

The game ends when either all 6 towers are destroyed (players lose) or all of the monster tiles have been played and successfully killed (players win).  If the players win, the one who killed the highest total hit points worth of monsters is considered “the winner,” but the honor is hollow compared to having survived in the first place. 

For such a light and cute-appearing game, Castle Panic is surprisingly strategic, and careful planning is crucial to success.  Most cooperative games suffer from the “solitaire mindset,” in which one player becomes the leader and directs the other players, and Castle Panic is no exception, but the ease of play allows every player to understand and participate without needing unwelcome guidance.  With about an hour of playing time for 2-6 players, Castle Panic is an excellent family game, and younger children should have no trouble grasping the rules and participating. 

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