LEGO: Monkey Palace

You are building one shared palace out of real LEGO bricks, and every piece you add is scored. Players take bricks and staircases from a common supply, click them onto the structure, and earn bananas and points. When the supply runs out the palace is finished, and the highest score wins. A turn is take, build, collect. You pick bricks from the market, add them so that staircases rise from old ones and pillars support what sits above, then take income for where your pieces landed. Building higher and linking to others' work pays best, so the palace grows as one object. The bricks are the appeal: a family builds something they can photograph at the end. At the lighter end of our Family shelf, it plays in forty-five minutes, works nicely at two, and is an easy sell to a ten-year-old who has never sat through a board game.