My Son Keeps the Heroes Out

March 3, 2025

Written by: Jonas Ståleker

I recently kickstarted (crowdfunding board games has been a hobby of mine for many years now) a very cute board game called Keep the Heroes Out. It is fairly straightforward, with no text—only symbols—so I hoped I could play it with my five-year-old son and possibly even my three-year-old daughter. And I was not disappointed.

While my daughter can’t really focus for an entire play session, my son has declared it his favorite game of all time (this illustrious title has been passed from game to game a few times already, but I still consider it quite an accolade). He has even made his own paper game pieces and designed both monsters and cards for the game. You could say I’m quite the proud father.

The game itself is a co-op tower defense deck builder. Quite a mouthful, but the gist of it is that you work together to defend against waves of enemies while acquiring stronger cards for your decks and eventually persevering until the onslaught ends.

In this case, the game puts you in the role of monsters guarding their dungeon (which sadly doesn’t translate well into Swedish, as the closest words either mean “prison dungeon” or just “cave”) from nasty heroes trying to steal all your valuable loot. Each player gets to choose a tribe of monsters—some with a lot of units, or “meeples,” like the slimes or ratkin with eight or more cute little fellas, or the mighty dragon that only has one piece to move around. This adds an asymmetrical aspect to the game, allowing players to tailor the gameplay to their preferences.

We’ve already played two games and won both, and my son is raring to go and tackle the harder difficulties. I can really recommend this game for both casual and more hardcore gamers (it has variable difficulty levels), and the aesthetics are amazing (the wooden meeples are gorgeous). The optional expansion packs that replace the non-wood meeple tokens with actual wooden pieces elevate the feel of the game to the next level.

Check it out on Board Game Geek!

My daughter loves the Unicorn monster and my son is a big fan of the Slimes. I took control of the covetous Gnolls!