Panda-monium at the Table! Building the Ultimate Dice Team in Panda Royale

If your family enjoys rolling dice, making clever choices, and a little friendly competition, Panda Royale from Last Night Games might be just the game to add to your collection! With more than 100 colorful dice, a quick-playing format, and enough player interaction to keep everyone involved, this game brings a whole lot of fun to the table.

In Panda Royale, players take on the role of panda elders assembling their own teams from seven different panda clans. Each clan has its own unique abilities, and choosing which dice to add to your collection is the key to earning the highest score. It's a fun combination of dice drafting, push-your-luck elements, and light strategy that keeps players making decisions throughout the game.

Gameschooling Benefits

Math Skills: This is probably one of the biggest gameschooling advantages of Panda Royale! Players practice addition, multiplication, and working with positive and negative numbers. Different dice require different scoring calculations, so kids get plenty of opportunities to work with numbers without feeling like they're doing a math assignment. As the dice collections grow, so do the calculations!

Strategic Thinking: Choosing which dice to add to your collection is an important part of the game. Do you want to focus on purple dice that double your score? Take a chance on red dice with their potential for big rewards and negative scores? Or collect yellow dice to improve your chances of getting first pick during the next drafting round? Players have to consider their current collection and think about how each new die might affect their future scores.

Decision Making & Risk Assessment: Not every choice comes with a guaranteed payoff. Red dice, in particular, introduce an element of risk and reward. Players must decide whether the possibility of a huge score is worth the chance of a negative one. Learning to weigh potential outcomes is a useful skill that extends well beyond the game table.

Adaptability: Since players are drafting from a shared pool of dice, you won't always get the die you originally wanted. Being able to adjust your plans, make the best of the available choices, and change strategies as the game progresses encourages flexible thinking.

Sportsmanship & Social Skills: The clear dice introduce player interaction through trading, while the shared drafting pool means players are paying attention to what others are collecting. Players also get practice handling unexpected outcomes, both good and bad, and celebrating the fun of friendly competition.

Panda Royale is a fun combination of dice rolling, drafting, and number crunching that offers quite a bit of entertainment in a relatively short amount of time. The rules are straightforward enough to make it approachable for families, but the different dice-scoring abilities give players plenty to think about as they build their collections. My family has thoroughly enjoyed this game!  And I love how quick it is to set up and learn.  It's a great filler game for a quick moment (we just played again while we waited for lunch to get ready), but you could also easily play a long tournament-style game. And because of the giant bag of dice, every game will be different!

The sheer number of colorful dice makes for an appealing table presence, and there's something satisfying about watching your little collection grow from one die to a handful of different scoring possibilities. With support for up to ten players, it's also a nice option for larger family gatherings or game nights when you have a crowd to entertain.

Game Details

• Game: Panda Royale

• Publisher: Last Night Games

• Designers: Jake Jenne & Nate Jenne

• Players: 2–10

• Recommended Age: 8+

• Playing Time: 20–30 minutes

• Game Type: Dice Drafting, Dice Rolling, Engine Building, Roll & Write

• Year Published: 2024