Review – Azul Kids

Asmodee seems to have a formula now for turning all of their most popular games into kids’ versions. Simplify the rules, add a cute physical object for the kids to use during the game, and add “Kids” to the end of the title. Simple enough, right? I jest, as “simplify the rules” is often much, much more difficult than it sounds. So far, my kids’ favorite games have been games originally aimed at kids, rather than kids’ versions of games for adults. But maybe Azul Kids is different? Let’s take a look!

I have a 12-year-old in 7th grade, and two autistic younger children, ages 8 and 4. So you can imagine that it’s not easy to find a game they all want to play together. However, they all played with tangram puzzles as a kid, and I am really impressed by just how clever Azul Kids’ appeal to children is.

While Splendor Kids and Ticket to Ride: First Journey try to entice kids by just having a “trophy” at the end of the game as a manipulative, Azul Kids turns the whole game into familiar manipulatives (tangrams). The goal is no longer to create rows and columns with complex scoring (for kids), but instead to finish the picture(s) on your board. Perhaps most importantly, there are two sides to each player mat, one for younger kids who are just finishing a picture, and then an advanced side where you are trying to finish several pictures worth different amounts of points. This lets the game “grow” with your kids; my 12-year-old enjoyed the advanced side (though she plays plenty of “grown-up” games with me), and my younger children could do the basic side. 

The bowl system of Azul is still essentially intact, but without the harshness of negative points. Instead, if a player has excess pieces, they’re passed around to the left for other players to use (or discarded if they come back around). I vastly prefer this change, although I find it is still possible to screw other players by taking the last piece(s) of a color that you know they need, so if you have children still struggling to handle winning and losing, they may not be ready for this yet, or they may need to play it one-on-one with an adult who’s willing to play nice. 

Even that small caveat, I can’t overemphasize how much of an ideal, clean design this game is. The highly tactile components, the clear simple rules that still allow for clever play, the levels of complexity that grow with the child… This is easily among my favorite “kids’ version” games (though I might still give the nod to Unlock! Kids).