Next Kingdomino game expands into the wild west with mix-and-match dominos
Featuring cowboy meeples.
The latest entry in the Kingdomino series sees players exploring the western frontier using mix-and-match dominos.
Announced at Gen Con, a tabletop gaming convention currently taking place in Indianapolis until Sunday August 6th, Moon River is an upcoming board game that utilises the same core mechanic found in the popular Kingdomino series. Though not directly called Kingdomino – or even a spin-on the name – Moon River is being referred to by its publisher, Blue Orange, as being part of the Kingdomino collection.
Rather than being set within a fantastical kingdom like Kingdomino, and its spin-off Queendomino, Moon River takes place within the American west. Players will be placing dominos made up of various plots such as farmland and corn fields, putting cowboy meeples on their chosen dominos and laying down cow-shaped meeples on their finished land.
Moon River looks to work very similarly to the family board game Kingdomino, with players scoring points by connecting matching sets of land and placing meeples on them. However, besides the theme, Moon River differs from the original Kingdomino by allowing players to customise their own domino pieces, by combining two domino halves together. Players obtain their domino halves by placing the meeple of their colour onto any available half of their choice, before combining any two halves they have into a single domino.
The players will then place their completed domino on a space adjacent to the starting river tile, with any subsequent dominos placed needing to be adjacent to an existing domino and have the connecting sides of the adjacent dominos match. If players place any dominos that feature cows within their land, they’ll be able to put a cow meeple onto that domino. Cow meeples function similarly to crowns in the original Kingdomino – scoring players points for every group of connected domino halves depicting the same landscape they’re placed on – except players are able to move them with the use of cowboy meeples: thereby giving them more scoring options on-the-fly.
Players will also be able to take advantage of various partners they can recruit to help them earn more points on their land and protect their cowherd from any potential poachers. Whichever player has the most points by the end of the game is named the winner.
Moon River was co-created by Bruno Cathala – the designer behind the original Kingdomino and co-designer of two-player board game 7 Wonders Duel - and Yohan Servais, who has previously worked on various entries for the Unlock! series of board games.
Players will be able to get their hands on a copy of Moon River at Gen Con, otherwise the board game is available from online stores such as Amazon UK and Amazon US at a retail price of $28 (£21).