Carve a path through a locked castle using the Keys To The Castle, but be careful as the other players will be trying to do the same.
If you’re looking for a simple to set up family board game that calls on both recall and strategy then you need to look no further than Keys To The Castle. It’s simply a case of crossing to any point on the opposite side of a six-by-six grid, however that grid is comprised of locked doors. You’ll need to create a path through unlocking the doors, however what has been unlocked can be locked again, and you don’t want to accidentally help out a rival.
Set up is as simple as shuffling the tiles and building the grid (5×8 for two players and 6×6 for 3-4 players) with locked doors up, then shuffling the cards and handing out three cards to each player. From there you each take a player piece and place it on the side nearest to you (although no two players can share a side) and you’re good to go. A turn in Keys to the Castle is, then, almost as easy as the set up.
For your turn you draw a card from the pile to your hand, then you use a card and then — if you wish — you move your character one place along the row or column. That’s it. The wrinkle happens in that you can’t move to a locked door, so you’ll need a card with a key of a matching colour (or a skeleton key) on it in order to unlock it. Sometimes you’ll flip a tile and there’ll be bars on it, which mean it can’t be passed unless you use a saw to open it, and othertimes it will give an extra turn when players land on it. Other cards include a secret passage which allows for diagonal movement by creating a bridge, and a net which causes players to skip a turn.
Keys to the Castle‘s greatest strength is in its randomised layout, and that players have the ability to relock doors to block others. In a game where, through great luck, somebody could win in fewer than six turns (through extra turn tiles) its important that it can all be pulled together so quickly, and the web cards (while scarce) and ‘carving a path’ mechanics make for easy catch-up mechanics.
I do wish that there was possibly some card-stealing mechanics, and that the tiles were different shapes — as I find ‘grids’ with spaces between them very messy — however, those are the wants of a person who has been playing board games for decades, while this is arguably something that transcends ages through its simplicity.
Keys to the Castle is available from the website of its publisher, Cheatwell Games.
