Review – Splendor Kids

Splendor will always be dear to my heart. It was one of my first review copies, and probably the only game where I was the first on the internet to post a review. I loved it! My wife was then pregnant with our first child, we were stuck inside during the snow, and we played it five times in a row when it came in the mail. While I was middling on the expansions, I thought Splendor Duel was great. But they’re both in now-crowded genres, and I find myself reaching for deckbuilding battlers instead of either version with two players, and with 3-4 players there are games that get going a little faster like Rebirth or The Crew. However, I was hoping Splendor Kids would be a way to get my children (and myself) back into the game. Did it work?

First off, overall I really like the way Asmodee has consolidated their “Kids” line of games. Mysterium Kids and Dixit Kids are awesome games, and the upcoming Azul Kids looks great. While they’re pricey titles, the productions are fantastic, and Splendor Kids is no exception. Despite having to apply some stickers to the trays, it has a fantastic look, and it’s a natural “kiddification” of the system. It has two innate problems, though.

The first problem is that Splendor just isn’t a system that gets kids excited. It lost the Spiel des Jahres to Camel Up for good reason; the latter just has more of a party vibe. There’s no denying the stuffy theme of Splendor, nor the fact that they somehow made a fun game out of nothing more than resource conversion arithmetic. While this game attempts to appeal to kids with the animal-themed medals, it’s nowhere near as tactile or fun as the rabbits of Dixit Kids or the drum of Mysterium Kids. 

The bigger problem is the competition. Broadly, Splendor Kids is an engine-building, racing game for kids. That already exists as Quacks & Co.: Quedlinburg Dash, which is a far superior game. It’s easier for kids to understand (turns are always drawing a chip from the bag), has more excitement with bigger turns, and just has a higher fun factor. It also has a better advanced mode, with exciting new things to try and get into your bag, while for some reason, the Splendor Kids advanced rules mostly consist of negative events for the players. Have these developers … met kids? That’s not something that’s gonna have them screaming “fun!” – nor me. I left those “the game hates you” Stefan Feld designs behind long ago. 

In and of itself, Splendor Kids is not a bad game, and I still have a soft spot for Splendor and Splendor Duel. But my kids aren’t going to ask for this again, and I’m not going to either. In a sense, it actually kept me from coming back around to Splendor, which is too bad.