dokapon revisited

The kids and I have now played three sessions of Dokapon Kingdom, increasing the number of weeks [7 turns per week] each time. The kids really like it, although my six-year-old daughter has a tendency not to venture out much and, thus, often comes in last place. Far and away the most difficult aspect of the game . . . moving. The auto move feature is sometimes frustrating, so I encourage the kids to turn it off and then, the games uses arrows to show all your possible finishing spaces.

photo by ben

I really like the risk-taking and exploration that the game encourages. My nine-year-old son has now been rewarded for a certain strategy, which is stealing and liberating towns. So, he’s setting off now for all the towns, moving into areas further and further from the starting castle, which has that ‘home base’ security that my daughter still clings to. Yet, no place is truly safe–you can be attacked by monsters or other players from afar, or you can get into several battles and lose track of your health. She sees my son succeeding by venturing outwards and is now trying to do the same. By playing a non-thief role, I’m trying to them how other roles, or jobs, can be rewarding.

Something else that is interesting is watching the kids develop informal rules, which, if you’ve watched kids play, often. For example, when the kids saw that thieves steal items from other players, they wanted to play a thief all the time, but then the advantage of the role quickly disappeared because everyone stole from each other. Partly out of self-preservation but also to advance the game, my son proposed that we not focus on stealing from each, or, as he said, ‘we just steal the same things from each other.’

This kind of gaming can be difficult to find, where the official rules of the game don’t overwhelm the players and allow them to be creative and even develop their own play. In a way, Dokapon Kingdom has only a few rules.

• You can move or use an item each turn.
• You have to earn gold to win.

Otherwise, the game is dealing with all the choices and responding to the different actions and events.

In a way, the game has that kind of tabletop rpg feel, even though in the multiplayer mode, there’s not a story per se. But it has that feel of finding the unexpected–that dynamic gaming feel. In a party game like Mario Party, you can do a few things to affect other players, but those actions are limited, until you get to the minigames. In Dokapon Kingdom, what you do, what squares you land on, has a significant impact–with battles, levelling your character, or  getting great items that help you attack or defend against opponents.

With games like Mario Party, the minigames get old and there’s not as much of a progression outside of the board itself. With Dokapon Kingdom, it’s not about moving around the board in a specific order but about getting the most gold, which you can do several ways. You can be good, or you can be evil . . . in several ways.

But right now, I’m enjoying watching the kids play in ways I haven’t quite seen before–while not completely new for them, the risk-taking and game-making is at another level. Perhaps soon, I’ll have my tabletop rpg group, and we’ll have those marathon sessions.

After the break, I’ve posted images of the instruction manual, which give you a pretty good idea of how the game works, what the different actions, jobs, battle commands, and spaces are, and how to use the game controllers [for Wii remote, classic controller, or Gamecube controller].

controls: background:

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