McKenna Games Royal Turmoil – New Wildly Fun Card Game for Kids 8-12, for Kids and Adults, Family Game and Learning Game for Family Night with Fast Setup and Fun Play

This game is awesome! Easy and fun to play with youngsters, which is hard to find! This is our go to game since it arrived. We have a wide age range in our family, 16 to 5, the 5 year old can't quite play this yet, but he's getting there. Only complaint is that it's only 5 players and we have a large family, so we will probably just buy a second deck. It's hard to find good games for that wide age range so I'll share our top 3 games #1 Royals (the game I'm reviewing) #2 Qwixx (which the 5 year old plays and is also a ton of fun) and #3 Wizard, which is more of a big kid game. We highly recommend all 3! Buildzi is also very easy for littles and lot of fun.

The game is easy enough to learn, but complex enough to keep us coming back to it to try new strategies. All of the character’s names and their illustrations are top notch; just fun to look at. A game like this is a great way to spend a fun evening with the whole family. I would highly recommend this game to anyone who is looking to expand their game collection as well as the first game to discover how card games can bring people together, create memories and engage all ages.

Royal Turmoil is an absolute blast, and it's quickly become a favorite in our family game nights. This game is all about fun, fast-paced action that keeps everyone entertained. One thing to keep in mind is that you'll need a good amount of space to play because it can get crowded as the game heats up. But that's a testament to how engaging it is. The more, the merrier, and the chaos only adds to the excitement. What's fantastic about Royal Turmoil is how easy it is to pick up and play. You can teach it to newcomers in no time, making it a fantastic choice for all ages. It's a game that even non-gamers can dive into and enjoy.

This game was given to me as a gift. At first I thought the instructions were a little much. However, we watched the video the box linked to show gameplay and it was easy afterward. Our family loves this through all ages. Everyone has picked it up and had fun. It has started some fun, friendly family brawls! Great job on your first game!!!

I like this game because it's easy to learn and fun to play. This is blend of collect recourses, strategy and pinch of unpredictable chaos. You must manage your recourses to collect/defend royals. Definitely ordering more to give to friends.

Royal Turmoil is a child-and-family-oriented card game with a bright art style and a game mechanic that is simple but still at least satisfactorily nuanced for adults. It is based on completing and accumulating completed suits, more or less, where the suits to be collected vary from "royal" to "royal." There are 24 royals to complete, or "settle," with anywhere from two to seven different resources required to settle each of those 24 royals. My six-year-old and I have played this a couple of times now, and she's clearly enjoyed it. The game appears a little complex at first glance, but the kiddo actually picked it up pretty well a few plays into the first game, and she has asked several times since to play it again. It didn't take her long to start speaking in the lingo of the game ("OK, so now I'm going to settle this one up") and even said "I like that the game is long" (mostly in reference to the fact that we've mostly played shorter, simpler games like Uno). So it's been a hit with her so far, and I like that she is also so interested in the scoring and math. I think it would work well with 3-4 players also. Some things and hopefully constructive criticisms to note: Gameplay is given on the box at ~30 minutes. With two players (granted, one is young and is talking through a lot of her moves out loud), it's taken us about an hour or so each time we've played. This may go somewhat faster with more players since the endgame is basically "until you run out of cards," but I still don't see how this will be a game anyone can expect to finish in half an hour. You'll need a fair amount of physical surface space to play this game even though it is card-based; the resource cards are meant to be assembled around each royal card, and each player also needs to have space to accumulate all their settled royals. The two of us have had a tough time playing each other on a ~36x24" (1m x .6m) portable table; our unsettled royals end up colliding into each other. If you're playing on a cleared dining table or something, you won't have problems. I might suggest removing the six wizard cards from the deck in play with younger, less strategically-minded players. At for my particular 6yo experimental subject, the mechanics of the wizard card scared her off from making "duel plays" against opponents; the usefulness and/or relative risk of wizard cards is eluding her for the moment. For slightly older players, I would leave them in. Finally, for a game released in 2023, there were a couple of questionable judgment calls made in the name and/or design of a few of the royals, who are named and personified in demonstrative art along the lines of Old Maid or, maybe, Garbage Pail Kids. As pictured, I would say that two of the 24 royals are based on body-based / fat-shaming humor, and one other royal card has the name "Rasta Rhino" - I'm not sure if the game designers were aware that Rastafarianism is in fact a religion, not a style. For now, these are not problems that will prevent us from playing the game, and gives our family grounds for talking about the sorts of jokes we'd rather not have kiddo make. But as fun as this game is otherwise, I really hope McKenna reconsiders and contemplates replacing these three cards in future editions of Royal Turmoil. (Maybe they could get rid of the royal with the revolvers, while they're at it?)

We loved learning and playing this game. The set up was easy and the rules were simple to understand. I appreciated that we didn’t have to play the 1st game with the rule book in hand EVERY step of the way, dragging through every persons turn! The kids love it even my 6 year old got to play along. The cards were of quality stock and the pics made the whole family giggle and smile. Well done. Just what my family was looking for. Looking forward to playing it more and more games from this company!

Fun. Not too difficult. Just enough to include younger kiddos without them feeling belittled, or the players having to play down to their age….three grands, and the grand parents enjoyed the colorful cards, and names.