The Palace of Splendor Awaits!

The Queen is trusting you to deliver food to the people of the Splendor Kingdom and then visit her at the palace to claim your medal of honor! You won’t be working together, but if you work hard, many of you may be able to earn the respect of the Queen. Well, we’d better get going!

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What Is It?

🎯The Goal of the game is to get to the palace of Splendor at the top of the board
⚙️Resource Management + Set Collection – During their turns players will collect various resources that they will hold on their purse boards. They can only hold 8 at a time, so they need to make sure they’re looking ahead to what they need to spend. They will spend resources according to the path they want to take on the board, in order to move up toward the palace. When they visit certain locations, they will get additional turns, while other locations earn them city tiles, which can be used as resources multiple times.
⚙️Race – While multiple players can win the game, there is still a race element since the gates will close once the first player reaches the top.

Who Is It For?

👥2 to 4 Players – Works well at any count. Players can share paths, so more players doesn’t mean less options by any means. But there are less resource tokens available with less players
👥Ages 6 & Up – Very approachable for a younger audience. Scales down your choices a bit since there’s less options for what to spend resources on
👥Fans of Splendor who might want something a little lighter to introduce to younger or less experienced players; or who prefer board movement to collecting cards

PROS

🟢Aesthetics – Very cute art; board isn’t overly busy
🟢Components – Nice quality all around. Love the touch of the resource holder being labeled to show how many are needed by player count. And I thought the medals were really cute
🟢Turns are quick and smooth
🟢I think it’s nice that multiple players could win since it’s geared at younger players
🟢I like the available variants to change things up once you know the game – particularly having a market of city tiles instead of drawing blindly

CONS

🔴It was a little unfortunate that it wasn’t just a race to the top, I actually think that might have been a bit better – first one there wins. Only because it can be disappointing if someone makes it and everyone else, even if they still have a turn to go, knows they can’t also make it.
🔴I thought it was a bit strange that the village tokens were mostly negative. Many took away resources or disrupted the market. And I thought the gem that acts as a tie breaker was a little too powerful in comparison to the others, especially since players are just going to be finding them randomly

Final Thoughts

For me, I think of Splendor as a light, introductory game that’s pretty approachable for newer/younger players. However, I’m also biased because I’ve played a lot of games. I think this is really cute, and because it has fun art and little meeples, it might appeal to a younger audience a bit more. But I also think you could easily try both and just see which your players like more! It has some unique elements – moving vs collecting cards, needing to collect more tiles before you can reuse ones you had – but still felt very familiar to the original game too. Overall, it’s definitely a solid game, I just prefer basic Splendor myself (well, I actually prefer Pokemon Splendor, but that’s another story). I’d say play both side by side and see which you prefer!

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Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 6/10

Designers – Marc André, Catherine André
Artist – Olivier Danchin
Publisher – Space Cowboys, Asmodee Kids
MSRP – $29.99
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