Even the big-brained fans of titles such as High Frontier 4 All need a break from time to time.

Pax Viking Junior, a family-weight version of the title’s big brother, Pax Viking, hit shelves in 2024. An exploration game for players ages 6 and up, Pax Viking Junior distills most of the gameplay in Pax Viking into a very straightforward affair and focuses on something kids love: cats!

Over a series of turns, players move their longship token to different regions in order to make friends with other farm animals and household pets (and yes, even the rules describe this process as “taking over friends”). These friends include mountain goats, fish, horses and cows, each represented on animal tiles that are placed into empty regions during a player’s turn.

If a region does not have an animal tile, the region’s first visitor gets to add one to the map, giving that player control of the region and the animal token there as a friend. Future visitors can take over the region using a cute takeover mechanic by adding more kitten tokens from the active player’s supply, or dropping one of a player’s two “Big Cat” tokens into the region, which scares the kitten tokens of all other…

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