Format: Card Game
Designers: Mike Petty
Publisher: The Game Crafter
In this Pro's and Con's review, I'm going to have a look at King for a Day a neat card available through The Game Crafter that deftly mixes elements of city building with a fun party game twist.
King for a Day would be fairly straightforward city building card game if not for a cool and unique mechanism that brings in a social element that should be more familiar to fans of party games than typical strategy board gamers. This interesting twist is at the centre of King for a Day. You see, the game is played in several rounds for the duration of which one player will be king or queen. Each round represents a day, get it, King for a Day! Every player gets to be king for a day, well, two actually by the time the game is over (three days if you're only three players). So, what does it mean to be king? At the start of each round, the current king or queen will draw a card from the "Deal" deck and read it out loud as an offer to the other players. Here's the party game twist that will be familiar to anyone who has played games like Balderdash, Apples to Apples or What?: Each player will secretly write down what they would like to offer the king in order to be awarded the Deal card. These cards are extremely valuable and may give immediate or lasting bonuses. After having read the offers, the king will choose one, awarding the player the Deal card in exchange for whatever the player had offered. This aspect of the game really is the meat as it's great fun to watch the offers escalate over the course of the game as players have more money, resources and even previously earned Deal cards to offer up to the current monarch.
So, that's the gist of the game, now let's have a closer look at King for a Day from a professional and a consumer point of view, shall we?