King of Tokyo Board Game Review

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By: IELLO     Players: 2-6     Ages: 8+     Time: 30 mins     Designer: Richard Garfield     Artist: Régis Torres

Player count, playing time and age are IELLO’s own published figures, checked against the publisher’s product page on September 2, 2026.

Japan is an incredible country that combines tradition and industrialization perfectly. It’s contributed so much in the way of pop culture and technology and boasts a rich landscape with many cultural sites to explore: Tokyo Tower, Hiroshima Castle, Mount Fuji, The Imperial Palace…it’s no wonder so many tourists flock there every year.

It’s just a shame about the frequent gigantic monster attacks!

Select one of six kaiju and battle other players for supremacy over the city of Tokyo. This explosive game involves rolling dice to deal damage and playing evolution cards to power up. Players can choose from mutant monsters, gigantic robots, and strange aliens. The last monster standing is declared King!

What Is King Of Tokyo? A Game of Giant Monsters

King of Tokyo was first published in 2011 and re-released in a second edition IELLO dates to 17 June 2016. It was designed by Richard Garfield and illustrated by Régis Torres. Garfield is famous for creating the collectible card game in the first place with Magic: The Gathering in 1993, and he is the great-great-grandson of former US president James A. Garfield…hands up whoever was today years old when they learned that! (Raises hand.) An earlier version of this review named the wrong Garfield — Andrew Garfield is an actor, and has never been president of anything.

King of Tokyo is like a game of King of the Hill but with mutant monsters vying to be the one who gets to destroy Tokyo. If you came here from a search for something to roll dice with, it also sits alongside our best dice games for adults and our best short board games, both of which cover the same 30-minute slot. The game has you rolling six dice as its main mechanic and players use the results of these rolls to determine what actions they’ll take on their turn. They can attack other players, heal wounds, collect energy cubes, or gain victory points.

Throughout the game, monsters will be moving in and out of the city strategically, as well as into Tokyo bay if there are more than four players. Players must occupy Tokyo to gain advantages such as earning extra victory points and the ability to attack all players not in Tokyo, but it also comes with the disadvantage of not being able to heal and facing all the other monsters alone. The winner is the first player to gain twenty victory points, or destroy everyone else and be the last one standing, becoming the one and only King of Tokyo.

How to Play King of Tokyo Board Game

Set-up doesn’t take very long, except for when it comes to choosing which kaiju to play as! There are six in the base game ranging from non-copyright infringing versions of King Kong and Godzilla, to gigantic robots and a mega shark, to a giant space penguin with a ray gun. When ready, players take the standee of their gigantic monster and the corresponding monster board, making sure the health is set to ten and victory points to zero. The power cards are shuffled, three are placed face up near the board with the others placed face down to create a deck. Energy cubes and dice should be kept within easy reach and the green dice kept to one side for later. Each player then rolls the six black dice and whoever scores the most claw marks goes first.

Each turn is made up of several actions or phases:

• Roll Dice

• Resolve Dice

• Enter Tokyo

• Buy Power cards

• End of turn

Players take the six dice and can roll them as many as three times if they aren’t happy with the results. This includes any dice that were previously set aside when the player decides to switch up strategies. After all three rolls, the results of the dice are resolved.

Each dice has four possible outcomes: smash, heal, gain energy, and victory points. Like in Yatzee, players have three successive throws to try and get the results they want. For every smash (claw mark) rolled, players in a different location to the active player lose one health point.

During the game, if a player ever inflicts damage during their turn they can choose to occupy Tokyo City and/or Tokyo Bay. When a player in Tokyo rolls smash icons, they will hit all players outside Tokyo. When a player outside Tokyo does the same, they will hit the player(s) occupying Tokyo but everyone else is safe. If the player occupying Tokyo is hit and their health falls dangerously low, they can withdraw from the city at this point. Where everyone starts the game outside Tokyo, if the player starting the game rolls any smash icons they may as well re-roll as they won’t be able to attack anyone.

Heal (a heart) allows players outside Tokyo to replenish one health point for every heart rolled. Players are only able to heal outside Tokyo so it’s important to know when to retreat. If a player loses all their health points and a skull is displayed on their monster board then they have been vanquished and are out of the game.

Energy (lightning bolt) represents energy cubes. For each of these dice rolled, players can take just as many energy cubes. These will be used later in the player’s turn.

You can win victory points by rolling three of the same number. If any more than three of the same number are rolled the player will get an extra point. EG. If the player rolls four 2’s on their dice they will get three points: 2 points for three of a kind and an extra point for the fourth dice.

Once the dice actions are resolved, if nobody is occupying Tokyo the active player must then enter the city. Doing so will grant that player a victory point and whoever starts their turn in Tokyo will gain two points at the start of their turn. Being in Tokyo is a double-edged sword, although you gain extra victory points and can attack every other player, every other player can attack you and you can’t heal. Knowing when to stand your ground and live to fight another day is a delicate balancing act.

The final step to a player’s turn involves purchasing cards. Energy cubes can be used to purchase one of the face-up upgrade cards which will provide a permanent or temporary effect, earn extra victory points, or allow them to roll extra dice on their turn. When a card is purchased a new one is drawn from the deck and replaces it. If players aren’t happy with the current selection they can exchange cubes and put three new energy cards on display instead.

After this the player ends their turn and the player on their left takes theirs. Play continues in this style until either one player is left standing, having defeated their opponents, or someone secures twenty victory points.

Expansions and Spin-Offs

As entertaining as the game on its own is, there have been several expansion packs and stand-alone games that borrow heavily from the rules but make one or two minor changes.

The Power Up! expansion introduces a significant new element to the game: Evolution cards. Each monster gains unique abilities through these Evolution cards, adding a layer of strategy and personalisation to gameplay. To acquire Evolution cards, players must roll three hearts, even if they are in Tokyo. Drawing cards from their own Evolution deck, players can use these new abilities to gain an edge over their opponents. This expansion not only enhances the replayability but also makes each monster feel distinct and adds exciting new strategies to explore.

King of New York, is a standalone version of the game that, was released in 2014 and takes the same concept but changes the setting to the titular city, competing instead over who gets to beat their chest atop the empire state building. There is also a cooperative version called King of Monster Island which keeps the gameplay the same, but pits players against a boss character rather than against each other and is a great option if your have a few different age groups playing together or if your kids struggle with competitive games.

The Dark Edition doesn’t change anything about the game play but does alter the aesthetic to be a little less silly and just gives a different flavor to the experience. You definitely don’t need to seek out the dark edition if you have the base game as it doesn’t alter the base game.

There are a variety of expansion packs that add all kinds of unique monsters to the mix as well as some additional upgrade cards. Although they don’t make a difference to the running of the game, if presented with the option of playing as the likes of Anubis or Cthulhu, why would you turn it down?

Expansions include special cards like the ‘nova death ray’ which add dynamic features to the game.

Is King of Tokyo Still in Print in 2026?

King of Tokyo is still in print. IELLO lists it on its own product page with a “where to buy” panel pointing at retail shops and at the publisher’s own store, which is a stronger signal than a retailer listing — a shop tells you what one warehouse has left, a publisher page tells you what still gets made. The expansions IELLO currently lists alongside it are Power Up!, Halloween, and the Anubis, Cthulhu, Cybertooth and King Kong Monster Packs. Checked September 2, 2026.

That is worth stating for a game this old, because it is the thing that decides whether the advice above is usable. A monster pack is also the cheapest way to make a game your kids already know feel new: a new monster costs a fraction of a new box and adds no new rules to teach.

Summary                                                                                                     

• Enjoyable to play

• Simple to learn

• Great artwork

• Expansions for replayability

• Giant monsters!

• Aim to be the only surviving monster to win the game

Who Should Skip King of Tokyo (and What to Buy Instead)

One thing decides whether King of Tokyo works at your table, and it is not the dice: it eliminates players, and it can do it early. A monster on ten health can be knocked out in three or four turns by unlucky rolls, and the game it was knocked out of keeps going for another twenty minutes. Every other criticism of this game is small. This one is the reason people who bought it stop bringing it out.

It matters most at exactly the table IELLO’s 8+ rating invites. An adult who busts out early goes to get a drink; an eight-year-old who busts out early sits and watches the rest of the family play. If your group has one youngest player who takes losing hard, that is the scenario to picture before you buy — not whether the rules are simple, because they are.

There are three honest answers to it, and only one of them is “buy something else.” Power Up! is the cheapest: its Evolution cards are drawn by rolling hearts, which gives a monster on low health something to do other than brace, and it pushes the average game further from an early knockout. Playing to twenty victory points rather than to the last monster standing is free, and it is already in the rules — the game ends when someone reaches twenty, so a group that races points instead of trading punches finishes with more monsters alive. And if the real problem is that your table does not enjoy attacking each other at all, the fix is a different box: King of Monster Island is IELLO’s cooperative version of the same dice engine, where the group fights a boss instead of each other.

Who should skip it outright: groups who want a game where a bad ten minutes cannot cost you the evening, and anyone shopping for a two-player night. King of Tokyo technically plays at two, but the whole design is about deciding whether the player in Tokyo is worth ganging up on, and with two players there is no gang. Our best family board games list ranks its picks by the youngest player they actually work for, which is the more useful lens if that is the table you are buying for.

Final Verdict

King of Tokyo is one of the most explosive games on a family shelf, offering a fast-paced action experience that’s highly enjoyable and easy to learn. It takes practically no time to set up and you can easily fit several sessions into one afternoon. The one real criticism, covered in full above, is that players can be eliminated quite quickly — the same failure mode we rank the whole of our best classic board games list by. If dice rolls go a certain way players might not get the opportunity to escape Tokyo or heal before the next turn. You’d have to be quite unlucky to go out in the first few turns but I have seen it happen before. Ultimately, the solid gameplay, combined with the fun aesthetic and the ability to play mutant monsters destroying Tokyo, makes this an excellent game.

Building a shelf rather than buying one game? Our free Top 10 Must-Have Games guide is the ten boxes we would start a collection with, with a page on each explaining what it earns its space for.

If You Liked This:

 We recommend this game in our list of best games for 8 year olds, which you can check out if you are looking for more games for that age group.

For those that like the sound or theme of this one, below are some similarly paced games to try out:

 

 

King Of Monster Island: The same basic mechanics, but with players working with rather than against each other in order to defeat a boss monster to create a new yet familiar experience

 

Smash Up: A deck-building game where players combine two, twenty-card decks to create crazy factions in order to battle other players and claim bases. Excellent replay value with plenty of set of cards to try

 

Pandemic: A cooperative game involving players taking on specific roles to try and spread a worldwide outbreak of four different diseases.

 

Castle Panic: Work together to repel the onslaught of Orcs and Trolls by defending your castle with various units and traps.

 

Munchkin: A fast-paced silly card game seeing players try to get to the end of the dungeon whilst slaying monsters, collecting items, and leveling up. Plenty of alternatives to the base game to try.

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