During my Toy Fair report of the Tiltfactor booth I mentioned I had a prototype of Monarch waiting to be played. This past weekend I finally had a chance to sit down and play it with my oldest son. The game is currently on Kickstarter with 12 days to go, and at the time of writing is at %68 of its goal.

In Monarch you’re playing as one of several sister vying for the crown of the realm. To do this you must create the most fantastic royal court in the land. You do this by harvesting food from the surround land and taxing the local villages. Using food and gold as currency you then buy cards that add crowns to your court, and also special powers. If you’ve got the most crowns by the time one player has 7 cards in their court, you win. During play you may also choose a banner to fly: Wisdom, Bounty, Culture, Might, or Balance. You do this by dedicating your court to a certain type of rule. You may only fly one banner, yet each has a powerful and unique reward for pledging yourself to it.

The game takes no time to setup and learn. My son and I had everything ready to go with a full understanding of the rules in less than 10 minutes. 20 minutes later I emerged victorious as queen of the land. There was a good amount of back and forth, and a good amount of cursing Moon cards that forced us to cooperate to earn a reward, or sometimes outright foiled both of our plans. If you’d like to get a feel for how the game works, you can snag the rules here.

I can’t comment on the components, since our copy is an early prototype without any of the final art or pieces. I did get a good look at the final art at Toy Fair, and was also sent some final cart art to share.

Overall I can say I’m a big fan of Monarch, and I look forward to the game being fully realized.

A prototype copy of Monarch was sent to preview from Titlfactor.

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This year Tiltfactor was showing off a new version of Awkward Moment, Awkward Moment at Work. Meant for a slightly older crown, this version is all about the workplace. It should be noted that while the game focuses on the workplace, there’s nothing particularly racy here. They state it’s a PG-13 game, so it’s more family friendly than other risque card games currently on the market.

While at their booth, I had a great chat with founder Mary Flanagan. She’s currently running a Kickstarter project for MONARCH, a game about building the most majestic court to be named heir to the throne. While not specifically a Tiltfactor release, I figured this would be the best place to talk about it! The art she showed me for the game so far was absolutely astounding, as seen to the right. Each piece was created on scratch board, scanned, and colored using Photoshop. Players in the game will have to manage both their cities and countryside to pull in resources, make sure their people are fed and happy, and fill your royal court with the most wondrous people and things in the land. There are even ways to disrupt the court of your siblings. Of course there are times when everyone must come together to make some sacrifice for the greater good of all.

I’ve actually got a prototype of this game sitting on my desk as we speak, and hope to get in some time with it soon. Keep an eye out for a Second Look sometime before the Kickstarter project has concluded.

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