LEGO and Asmodee announce board game collaboration
Posted by CapnRex101,
LEGO announced the development of a board game yesterday, in collaboration with gaming specialist Asmodee. The press release follows:
Introducing Monkey Palace – A Playful Board Game Collaboration by the LEGO Group and Asmodee
The LEGO Group and Asmodee announces their first jointly-crafted board game, Monkey Palace. The game will be officially unveiled to retailers and industry partners at the Nuremberg Toy Fair and will be available for purchase from October 3 at Spiel Essen, the world’s largest board game convention, and from select leading retailers around the world.
Monkey Palace was created by game designers, David Gordon and Tin Aung Myaing, and provides family fun for all ages. It is a jungle-themed game of light strategy tailored for two to four players, that incorporates both collaborative and competitive elements.
Players must strategically work together to construct the Monkey Palace while competing for the highest brick income and points, all under the watchful gaze of the Monkey. The palace gradually takes form, resulting in an impressive construction using LEGO elements that players can proudly display at home. The iconic LEGO System in Play means that each time the board game is played, the building experience and final construction are totally unique and different.
Birgitte Bülow, industry veteran and leading the LEGO board game creation team at Asmodee, said: “We're thrilled to take all LEGO and board game fans on this gaming journey, combining the LEGO Group’s timeless creativity with our passion and expertise in board games. Utilising the endless possibilities of LEGO bricks was pivotal in designing this game. We believe Monkey Palace offers an extraordinary gameplay experience, blending competition and collaboration for board game enthusiasts worldwide."
Jaume Fabregat, Board Games Lead, LEGO Publishing, said, "At the LEGO Group, we’re committed to inspiring the builders of tomorrow, which is why we’re so delighted to reveal Monkey Palace in collaboration with Asmodee. The game challenges kids and adults alike to use LEGO elements to build, unbuild and rebuild their palaces, creating a fun play experience where no two games are the same. This latest collaboration allows us to bring even more creative and innovative ways to play.”
This collaboration was the result of extensive research and development undertaken by both companies, with the shared goal of creating new social experiences in play that transcend generations. Together, the LEGO Group and Asmodee aim to discover innovative ways to combine the beloved LEGO System in Play with the socially interactive nature of board games, delivering new and unique play experiences for families and LEGO fan.
As mentioned in the press release, more information and images of the game will be available after Nuremberg Toy Fair, so hopefully we will have more to publish next Tuesday.
Are you a fan of board games and does this collaboration interest you? Let us know in the comments.
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39 comments on this article
You can bet your Asmodee that this is going to be some wacky stuff.
Is it April already? I still kinda want that Duplo for adults set.
There are some games that Asmodee license that I have and love, so I'm hoping this is another great one.
As a big game person, I'm cautiously optimistic. This could be pretty underwhelming, but seeing as they are working with a publisher like asmodee, I do have a bit of hope we could be looking at a legitimate game.... maybe.
LEGO Games returning for real?!?!
Let's see how it'll turn out, but I love it that they try their hands at this once again - there was a lot of potential with the last lego boardgames!
I've seen a few Lego board games in the past and since I've gotten back into them of late (namely all my childhood ones) and some TTRPG and others, i hope this will become the first of many new Lego board games for kids and adults alike.
Frankly there's a pretty big untapped market here for Lego. Imagine a modular, D&Desque game where you can connect different sets to expand a board, or add new mechanics to a base game set. Huge potential here.
I love board games, but all the ones I have seen from LEGO so far were mediocre at best, so I'm not really excited by this news.
Also have never heard the name Asmodee so far. Who are they? The board games we have are from well known names like Ravensburger, Schmidt, Hasbro, Parker, MB, Kosmos etc.
Lots of great games by Asmodee:
Games published by Asmodée include:
7 Wonders
Carcassonne own and love
Catan own and love
Citadels
Diplomacy pretty good
Dixit favorite of all games
Dobble
Formula De
Hanabi OK game
Jaipur really good 2 player
Jungle Speed
Liar's Dice
Pandemic soooo fun
Splendor point salad game but fun
Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game
The Werewolves of Millers Hollow
Ticket to Ride my intro to European style board games. There is a lego ideas version out there currently
Time's Up!
@shedjed said:
"Lots of great games by Asmodee:
Games published by Asmodée include:
7 Wonders
Carcassonne own and love
Catan own and love
Citadels
Diplomacy pretty good
Dixit favorite of all games
Dobble
Formula De
Hanabi OK game
Jaipur really good 2 player
Jungle Speed
Liar's Dice
Pandemic soooo fun
Splendor point salad game but fun
Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game
The Werewolves of Millers Hollow
Ticket to Ride my intro to European style board games. There is a lego ideas version out there currently
Time's Up!"
really? i got quite some of these and i had never heard of Asmodee :D
this collaboration might be a good one!
@lORDoFtHEbOARD said:
" @shedjed said:
"Lots of great games by Asmodee:
Games published by Asmodée include:
7 Wonders
Carcassonne own and love
Catan own and love
Citadels
Diplomacy pretty good
Dixit favorite of all games
Dobble
Formula De
Hanabi OK game
Jaipur really good 2 player
Jungle Speed
Liar's Dice
Pandemic soooo fun
Splendor point salad game but fun
Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game
The Werewolves of Millers Hollow
Ticket to Ride my intro to European style board games. There is a lego ideas version out there currently
Time's Up!"
really? i got quite some of these and i had never heard of Asmodee :D
this collaboration might be a good one!"
Same here. Perhaps they have licenses in other countries.
Die Siedler von Catan (which is a German game after all, invented in 1995 by Klaus Teuber) for example is by Kosmos, not Asmodee.
Similarly Carcassonne, although French sounding, was also invented in Germany (in 2000 by Hans-Jürgen Wrede) for Hans im Glück Verlag. Don't know about the others on that list since I've not heard of any of them.
Yeah published and created are different thing.
@WemWem said:
"Frankly there's a pretty big untapped market here for Lego. Imagine a modular, D&Desque game where you can connect different sets to expand a board, or add new mechanics to a base game set. Huge potential here."
So basically Heroica
Lego games is making a comeback?
If this does well, I'd expect to see expansions, or at least parts packs. (I assume someone will cook up house rules for other pieces or something-- or maybe that's part of it? A "some pieces provided, but feel free to use parts from your own collection" kind of thing.)
Depending on how the building actually works, it'd be nice to have some kind of showcase for fun/interesting/unorthodox builds.
@WemWem said:
"Frankly there's a pretty big untapped market here for Lego. Imagine a modular, D&Desque game where you can connect different sets to expand a board, or add new mechanics to a base game set. Huge potential here."
Lego did that once with their Heroica games. Each an individual set and board, but could all be combined for bigger play.
That was not even the first time lego included a board game into a set either. Many of the larger sets from the Adventurers Orient Expedition line also had a buildable board game map that connected the sets. 7418 was the one I grew up playing with that board game map inclusion.
@WemWem said:
"Frankly there's a pretty big untapped market here for Lego. Imagine a modular, D&Desque game where you can connect different sets to expand a board, or add new mechanics to a base game set. Huge potential here."
Lego did that recently, in 2020 with ninjago sets. See 71722 and the rest from that wave. You can connection those sets, there is rules book and an unusual dice. Have you tried that?
...I wonder if this will mean a return of the LEGO dice?
@Ridgeheart said:
" @Ian_S said:
"...I wonder if this will mean a return of the LEGO dice?"
Die, Ian. Die."
Indeed. *chortles* I definitely deserved that. In my defence I failed to remove that "the" when I restructured the sentence fragment, but... *steps away from keyboard in grammatical embarrassment*
I see two dies there. Wouldn’t that be dice? ;-)
Our family likes board games and Lego, so this could be good. But the most fun games are the simplest to play.
The only Asmodee title I recognise is Catan, which I thought was too complicated to be family fun, so I hope this Lego game isn't like that.
@WemWem said:
"Frankly there's a pretty big untapped market here for Lego. Imagine a modular, D&Desque game where you can connect different sets to expand a board, or add new mechanics to a base game set. Huge potential here."
*coughHeroicacough*
@AustinPowers:
I know Ravensburger from puzzles, we have two Schmidts in my LUG, and kosmos is the Russian name for space. I’m not familiar with any games they publish.
@shedjed:
It looks like Asmodee has mostly acquired the publishing rights to games developed by other companies, often by buying the company that owns the game, or one of the companies that has a slice of the publishing rights. They don’t appear to have actually developed their own game in-house (though they do own a couple outfits that have). They also just got bought by a bigger fish in 2021, so I don’t know what other resources that connects them to. Regardless, this suddenly doesn’t seem like the great news people are taking it for, if they haven’t developed a single game in-house, and they have any attention of doing so now.
@lORDoFtHEbOARD:
They one regional publishing rights to several games, so if you don’t live in that region, someone else is probably publishing the same game for your market. They also own a few other companies, like Fantasy Flight, so you may have seen the names of their subsidiaries instead of their own. And they are now owned by someone else, so that name may have replaced their own in some instances.
@shedjed said:
"Lots of great games by Asmodee:
Games published by Asmodée include:
7 Wonders
Carcassonne own and love
Catan own and love
Citadels
Diplomacy pretty good
Dixit favorite of all games
Dobble
Formula De
Hanabi OK game
Jaipur really good 2 player
Jungle Speed
Liar's Dice
Pandemic soooo fun
Splendor point salad game but fun
Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game
The Werewolves of Millers Hollow
Ticket to Ride my intro to European style board games. There is a lego ideas version out there currently
Time's Up!"
Well, not really. Most of these, maybe even all, were published by other companies which Asmodee acquired after the fact. This has been going on for some ten years now - Asmodee used to be a publisher like any other, but then they were bought by an investment banking group which quickly began buying other publishers and putting them under the Asmodee label.
"and i had never heard of Asmodee"
Asmodee is one of the biggest BG publishers. It's like saying you never heard of Eletronic Arts
As someone who loves board games almost as much as he loves Lego (even if I don't get to play with one nearly as much as with the other), this is definitely relevant to my interest; I'll have to keep an eye out for it.
Ridgeheart said:" @Ian_S said:
"...I wonder if this will mean a return of the LEGO dice?"
Die, Ian. Die."
I'd say there's no need for death threats, but some things just should not be countenanced.
@AustinPowers said:
" @lORDoFtHEbOARD said:
" @shedjed said:
"Lots of great games by Asmodee:
Games published by Asmodée include:
7 Wonders
Carcassonne own and love
Catan own and love
Citadels
Diplomacy pretty good
Dixit favorite of all games
Dobble
Formula De
Hanabi OK game
Jaipur really good 2 player
Jungle Speed
Liar's Dice
Pandemic soooo fun
Splendor point salad game but fun
Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game
The Werewolves of Millers Hollow
Ticket to Ride my intro to European style board games. There is a lego ideas version out there currently
Time's Up!"
really? i got quite some of these and i had never heard of Asmodee :D
this collaboration might be a good one!"
Same here. Perhaps they have licenses in other countries.
Die Siedler von Catan (which is a German game after all, invented in 1995 by Klaus Teuber) for example is by Kosmos, not Asmodee.
Similarly Carcassonne, although French sounding, was also invented in Germany (in 2000 by Hans-Jürgen Wrede) for Hans im Glück Verlag. Don't know about the others on that list since I've not heard of any of them. "
Asmodee is more of a publisher conglomerate, a bit like EA is for video games. Among the studios they own are Fantasy Flight, Z-Man, Atomic Mass and Days of Wonder. So I guess different countries have different publishing studios under their ownership if that makes sense.
For people missing context, Asmodee is a huge conglomerate once publisher that is dominating the board game market in Europe, France specifically. They've made modern games, and a lot of the studios under them make excellent modern games (well beyond the typical roll-and-move most people are used to). Depending on the target age they are making this for, it could be a great modern game, well above the quality of the previous line of games by Lego.
As a big fan of board games, I am looking forward to hearing more about this!
Asmodée is a €2 billion company. That’s ‘billion’ with a ‘b’. Not small.
I’m not into board games much and mostly know them from their acquisition of Esdevium, which was at the time the largest distributor of ‘hobby games’ (CCGs, RPGs) in Europe.
While they may have bought their way into the gaming world, that shouldn’t be a source of concern. A better predictor of a board game’s success or failure is its designer. Some designers, like Reiner Knizia, have a track record of creating popular games. So that’s what we should be focusing on.
@GusG said:
""and i had never heard of Asmodee"
Asmodee is one of the biggest BG publishers. It's like saying you never heard of Eletronic Arts"
Depends on the country.
In Germany for example the largest board game manufacturers by far are Ravensburger, followed by Schmidt, Hasbro Games and Kosmos (who from the beginning to this day publish the entire Catan lineup among many others). I had to search quite a while to find any Asmodee games published here. The only one I could find that I had ever heard of or seen in a store is Dobble, which in itself is just a licensed version of the US original called Spot it. Didn't find any original games by them at all here. Plus, Dobble isn't even a proper board game but just a take along card game for like when you take kids on a long drive in the car and want them to have something to pass the time.
@Phoenixio said:
"For people missing context, Asmodee is a huge conglomerate once publisher that is dominating the board game market in Europe."
So basically a once small and relatable company but now a huge soulless corporate behemoth that cares about nothing but money anymore.
Just like TLG actually, so a perfect fit in that regard.
I'm even less excited about this piece of news now.
We own and play a lot of board games and are obviously also lego fans. But I have never really enjoyed the previous LEGO games. Most were terrible games and not very good building experiences. If we want to play a game, we play a game. If we/I want to build, then we/I use a better selection of LEGO.
Atlantis Treasure was not too bad, same with Battle of Hoth. But some of the others were just terrible games, poorly thought out and the make up your own rules to make the game better aspect indicates they didn't really play test them properly. But when heavily reduced, they were good parts packs. Hopefully having a proper games company onboard (!) will change this aspect, but I imagine the collaboration with LEGO will mean it is pitched at low age groups and so will be rather simplistic. If it ends up being Creationary v2, forget it. Boring game and not even interesting for parts.
@AustinPowers said:
" @GusG said:
""and i had never heard of Asmodee"
Asmodee is one of the biggest BG publishers. It's like saying you never heard of Eletronic Arts"
Depends on the country.
In Germany for example the largest board game manufacturers by far are Ravensburger, followed by Schmidt, Hasbro Games and Kosmos (who from the beginning to this day publish the entire Catan lineup among many others). I had to search quite a while to find any Asmodee games published here. The only one I could find that I had ever heard of or seen in a store is Dobble, which in itself is just a licensed version of the US original called Spot it. Didn't find any original games by them at all here. Plus, Dobble isn't even a proper board game but just a take along card game for like when you take kids on a long drive in the car and want them to have something to pass the time. "
In the UK, Schmidt is distributed by Coiled Spring. Guess who owns Coiled Spring now?
Correct, Asmodee.
Asmodee are the main UK distributor for Pokemon. They are my second biggest supplier by cash volume, only after LEGO
@paulrothwell said:
"In the UK, Schmidt is distributed by Coiled Spring. Guess who owns Coiled Spring now?
Correct, Asmodee.
Asmodee are the main UK distributor for Pokemon. They are my second biggest supplier by cash volume, only after LEGO"
On the positive side, asmodee distributing many of the independent brands does mean a lot of them are free to play at boardgamearena, so good for try before you buy.
@CCC said:
" @paulrothwell said:
"In the UK, Schmidt is distributed by Coiled Spring. Guess who owns Coiled Spring now?
Correct, Asmodee.
Asmodee are the main UK distributor for Pokemon. They are my second biggest supplier by cash volume, only after LEGO"
On the positive side, asmodee distributing many of the independent brands does mean a lot of them are free to play at boardgamearena, so good for try before you buy."
Asmodee are an excellent company to deal with. Happy to show how games work, really dedicated staff, excellent toy fair displays. LEGO could learn a lot from them
@Zander said:
"A better predictor of a board game’s success or failure is its designer. Some designers, like Reiner Knizia, have a track record of creating popular games. So that’s what we should be focusing on."
Agreed. Many great "authors" in the board game world.
A BoardGameGeek (BGG) search learns that:
- David Gordon has zero games on his track record.
- Tin Aung Myaing (TAM) has authored 1 single game, LAIR (2019), which has only 37 votes, and 2 games that never were released.
So, I can't say I'm that impressed with the choice of designers for LEGO's first major cooperation in the board game space. Nobody else was available?
@Zander said:
"While they may have bought their way into the gaming world, that shouldn’t be a source of concern. A better predictor of a board game’s success or failure is its designer. Some designers, like Reiner Knizia, have a track record of creating popular games. So that’s what we should be focusing on."
Reiner Knizia was responsible for Ramses Pyramid (which in all fairness wasn't too bad as a game) and I think he had some sort of oversight or input to many of the LEGO games series. So I guess you still have to look at who they are working for at the time. I think another issue of LEGO games is shrinking down the size, especially the pieces. Small parts in small spaces are fine for building when you put them somewhere and they stay there. But when you need to move them frequently, bigger game tokens make for a better game experience for the same game.
@AustinPowers said:
" @GusG said:
""and i had never heard of Asmodee"
Asmodee is one of the biggest BG publishers. It's like saying you never heard of Eletronic Arts"
Depends on the country.
In Germany for example the largest board game manufacturers by far are Ravensburger, followed by Schmidt, Hasbro Games and Kosmos (who from the beginning to this day publish the entire Catan lineup among many others). I had to search quite a while to find any Asmodee games published here. The only one I could find that I had ever heard of or seen in a store is Dobble, which in itself is just a licensed version of the US original called Spot it. Didn't find any original games by them at all here. Plus, Dobble isn't even a proper board game but just a take along card game for like when you take kids on a long drive in the car and want them to have something to pass the time. "
It's because modern games have grown out of France and Germany at the same time. A lot were even produced in Germany for a long while, so it's normal that bigger companies like Ravensburger, Schmidt, and Kosmos are still standing strong.
As for Asmodee being a huge soulless entity, I wouldn't quite say that yet. They're still very focused on excellent modern games, which is a really niche hobby still, even if they end up just owning the studios that make them instead of making games themselves. I would call soulless the layer above that though, that's for sure.
hope this turns out better than the ill-fated LEGO Games, or at least that we get some cool microbuilds out of the venture
Asmodee is a corporate bully and I don't really agree with their business practices, they are the second largest board game company behind Hasbro. This will be interesting.