Temple Twist

Kosmos have created something of a sub-genre of board games with 3D components. We've previously featured, for example, Dodo and Nunatek on Board's Eye View. Bernhard Weber's Temple Twist is the latest addition to the range. It premiered at the 2026 UK Games Expo, and like its predecessors its 3D 'board' gives it immediate and striking table presence. There's a bit of pre-assembly required but you should only have to do it once as the assembled 'temple' fits neatly back in the box.

Temple Twist is a cooperative game for up to four players. You can play it solitaire but, for us, the sweet spot is as a two-player game where you have the opportunity to talk through your actions (in terms of overall tactics: players aren't supposed to openly share their cards) but without an overlong wait till you get your hands on the temple construct to take your turn with it.

The game involves inserting a large custom six-sided die - or rather 'explorer cube' - in a door of the temple and then playing cards that let you rotate and insert or remove wall panels. In this way, players are manipulating the temple with the aim of ensuring that the die comes out of another specified door having visited various rooms en route.

It's essentially a 3D maze game and it's easy enough in this basic mode but that's just Level 1... As you succeed you move on to the next level, which steps up the difficulty of the task. As you step up the difficulty so you need to think more carefully about the placement of all the permanent and temporary walls in the temple and the effect that each rotation will have on the 'explorer cube'. You'll find Temple Twist is super easy until it isn't!

For adults picking up Temple Twist as a spacial awareness filler it can be good to just jump straight in with the challenge cards that are included with the game but if you're playing Temple Twist as a family game then we'd recommend working your way through the levels so that children develop their spatial awareness and their confidence in 'programming' their actions while learning the need to make the most efficient use of their limited (card) resources.

(Review by Selwyn Ward)

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