Save the Princess - Lego game created on the fly together with daughter!

Save the Princess - click to enlarge!

Me and my eldest daughter (5.5 years) created a cooperative Lego game a few days ago. We named it Save the Princess, and it was all about saving a princess from a bunch of bad monsters!

We created a board consisting of areas. In one end there was a castle (with a princess), and in the other end, monsters were spawned. And for each turn, those monster moved one area closer to the castle. Me and my daughter had one hero each, which we moved around and fought the monsters so that they ran away, i.e. protecting the castle and the princess. If a monster would reach the castle, the game would end in a failure for the heroes.

We used this simple turn sequence:

1) Spawn new monsters. We draw small colored Lego pieces from an opaque cup. If the color just drawn, matched a color indicator in a 'monster spawn area', we put a new monster there. If no match, no new monster entered play that turn.

2) Heroes move/fight. We moved our heroes. Up to one area for my (slower) hero, and up to two areas for my daughter's (faster) hero. If a hero ended up in an area with a monster, a fight was initiated. My hero fought with a D8 (a little stronger), and my daughter's hero with a D6 (a little weaker). As the initiators of the fight, a D4 was added in their favor. Monster always fought with a D8. Highest total sum of all dice on each side (heroes vs. monsters) won the fight. If the monster(s) won, the hero(s) backed two steps towards the castle (shortest path). If the hero(es) won, the monster(s) ran away and was out of the game.

3) Monsters move/fight. All monster moved one area towards the castle (shortest path). If a monster ended up in the same area as a hero, a fight was initiated by the monster, meaning the monster would get the extra D4 die.

We ran the game until all monsters on the board had ran away, and there were no new monsters to spawn. Took about twenty minutes. It was a lot fun! Bothing building the board and play!

I will tweak the rules a little bit for the next game round. Make a little bit harder. Make the monsters win the fights more often. It was a little bit too easy during this first play-through.