_{Image credit: Benoit Bannier @ BGG}

A game that really hit home with our household and friends was 2019's It's A Wonderful World by French publisher La Boîte de Jeu. The same company, designer, and artist came back for the two-player sequel, It's A Wonderful Kingdom.

My wife and I play most of our games at the two-player count (especially in the last few years, given the pandemic), so we were excited to try this one. Despite being a drafting game, It's A Wonderful World plays pretty well at two players, but surely one specifically designed for two should be better, right?

Well...

Let's talk about the changes first. In summary, they are:

1. The theme has been changed from dystopian future to generic fantasy.
2. The card drafting has been replaced with an I-Split-You-Choose system.
3. There are now "mean" cards in the game — monsters and traps that cost you victory points.
4. The General and Financier tokens have been replaced by a singular Knight token.
5. The game comes with several different modules to change up how the game plays.

Changing the theme was no big deal. IAWW had a pasted-on theme to begin with, but looked good on the table. IAWK has the same artist and looks equally as good.

I-Split-You-Choose (ISYC) is an interesting alternative to drafting, and it's one that I think works better on paper. I wouldn't call my wife or I particularly Analysis Paralysis-prone, but the game also allows you to play two (or more, with special abilities) cards face-down so the other person doesn't know what's available. Typically you're trying to hide one of the trap/monster cards, or just bury something juicy so you can take it yourself later. Either way, turns are easily twice as long as before, stretching the game out and making it overstay its welcome.

The trap/monster cards feel unnecessary in this game. When most scoring cards only get you 5–10 victory points by game's end, being forced to take a card that is -5 feels particularly punishing and ultimately unnecessary. In the case of the monsters module, one of us actually ended up with a negative score, which is never fun after spending an hour playing a game.

The Knight tokens are now much more important, as all of the modules depend on them. Of course, now you have the conundrum of constructing buildings that give you Knights or ones that give you points.

The modules are a neat idea, but again, more so on paper than in practice. Of the three modules we tried, they all essentially boiled down to "get a bunch of Knights to do stuff".

Overall, I was a bit disappointed with the first play, and subsequent plays made me like the game even less. The fun little drafting game that captured our hearts had been replaced by an unnecessarily mean slog of a game with more rules than fun. I can't think of any situation where I'd choose to play Kingdom over World.

It's A Wonderful World is a wonderful game, and you should check it out if you haven't played it yet. It's A Wonderful Kingdom just makes me wonder who thought it was actually fun.

FINAL RATING: 5/10