May I have your attention please!

I would like to announce that the Roll and Write craze has officially arrived for children!

Now children can roll and write their way to victory as they build their very own castle! 

What is Once Upon a Castle? 

Once Upon a Castle is a roll & write game for 2-4 players ages 6 and up. Well, actually it’s more of a roll and draw, or roll and color, but you get the idea. 

A roll and write game is where players will roll a set of dice, make a choice from the available options rolled, and then write that down somewhere on their player sheet. The winner is the player with the most points. 

In Once Upon a Castle, players will be rolling dice to build their castle. Will they build strong walls or tall towers? Will they focus on bringing lots of residents to their kingdom? That will be up to them to decide!

How do you play?

Every player begins the game with a blank castle sheet. You can use either side. One has an outlined castle that you’ll trace as you complete parts, the other is blank, allowing you to use your imagination and design your own!

(For your first game, we recommend everyone use the pre-drawn castle side.)

Players take turns in clockwise order. 

On your turn you will first roll the dice. These two dice feature different resources, food, coin, wood, stone, residents, or a wild side that allows you to choose any resource on the die.

You then mark off both the symbols on the dice off on your player board. Meanwhile, all other players are able to select one of the dice you rolled to mark off on their player board as well. If you choose residents, you will outline or color them in on your player sheet.

At the end of your turn, you can remove your tokens from your player board from a completed row or column to draw the corresponding part of the castle. You may draw multiple parts of your castle if you have several completed rows or columns that do not intersect each other. 

Play then passes to the next player who rolls the dice and will have the chance to fill in parts of their castle. 

Players score points based on the parts of the castle they built. There are twelve main parts of the castle: 4 walls, 4 towers, and 4 Donjon floors. Players are also able to adorn their walls with flags to earn points and attract residents to their castle to earn points as well. 

The game ends immediately after someone has completed the twelfth and final main part of their castle. Other players may draw whichever castle parts are available to them based on completed rows and columns on their personal board. Scores are counted at the top of the page and the player with the highest score wins. 

What do we think?

Well this game is just delightful. I am completely smitten with everything Once Upon a Castle offers. 

I am a huge fan of roll and writes myself, but I love how well this fits that style of play in a game for children with a theme that draws them in. They love building and bringing their castle to life.

This works really well for kids. Our oldest, (7) is able to play independently on her own. Our 5.5 year old son really enjoyed the game, but this was just beyond his ability to play independently. We had to do a quite a bit of rules reminding and watching to make sure he marked off the correct section of his castle or didn’t mark off things he wasn’t supposed to.

The game says its for 6 and up. Depending on your child, this might be a touch on the young side. As I said, our son had a great time playing, and while he did require some help, he’s not too far off from being able to play on his own. I’d think that this time next year he’ll have aged enough to really grasp what he needs to do.

I like how kids are incentivized to stay focused throughout the whole game since they are always able to mark something off on their board on their turn. The game takes about 30 minutes to play, which can be on the longer side for some kids, so it’s nice that they have things they can do on everyone’s turn rather than just their own. This also helps make sure they have at least one thing they can mark off on their turn, if not more. 

Once Upon a Castle comes with two variations for play, basic and advanced. The basic rules work great for younger players. The advanced rules change the game slightly by adding in special guest cards which gives players different powers to utilize during play. This is a great variant to try with older players or once kids have a solid handle on the basic rules.

Works of Art

After the game is over, the fun is just beginning! 

Coloring is a huge activity in our household and to say that our kids loved getting to finalize their castles after the game was over would be an understatement. 

I love this! Not only does Once Upon a Castle provide a nice little game where kids will lightly strategize how best to use the dice and player boards to score well, but then they are able to stretch their artistic wings after the game is over. Creativity for the win!

Our kids spent more time coloring their castles than they did playing the game. Watching them sit around the table happily coloring their fantasy worlds for over an hour made this mom pretty darn happy. Of course, after their masterpieces were finished, they proudly asked to hang and display them for the family. 

Such a fun bonus to this game!

While you can color during play, (and kids will most likely be motivated to,) I highly recommend that you encourage players to just outline the sections of the castle they build rather than coloring them in right away. This saves everyone’s sanity by keeping the game time to that 20 minute time frame. Otherwise you’ll be there for ages while everyone focuses more on their artwork than the game.

Summary

All in all, this is a great game for kids. It works really well for that 6-8 age range and is one that mom and dad will enjoy playing as well. If your kids are budding artists, there’s a good chance that they will greatly enjoy playing Once Upon a Castle. With plenty of double-sided castle sheets and two levels of difficulty, it’s sure to keep them busy planning and designing their castle for a while.

If you’d like to pick up your own copy of Once Upon a Castle, click here.

Thank you to Blue Orange Games for sending us this copy of Once Upon a Castle for review. As always, our thoughts and opinions are our own. 

This page contains affiliate links at no cost to you. To read our full disclosure click here. 

If you liked this review…

Check out our review of Kingdomino Duel, another great roll & write from Blue Orange Games.

And be sure to check out our Board Game Gift Guide for this year’s holiday season!

Game Info:
Title: Once Upon a Castle
2-4 Players Ages 6+
Designer: Corentin Lebrat, Ludovic Maublanc
Artist: Sylvain Aublin
Publisher: Blue Orange Games