DANCES WITH FILMS 2026 REVIEW! Tyler Cino Maradiaga’s King of Games is a nine-minute drama in which what a child sees and what the adults around him are living through are two very different things.
It’s moving day for Hector (Emperor Kaioyus), an eight-year-old boy in late 1990s Queens who has bigger things to worry about than the packing boxes and the movers. Hector was given a pack of King of Games cards, and inside was a valuable dragon. Now he’s tearing through all the boxes looking for the rest of his cards. Much to his mother’s dismay, she tells Hector to stop, but he’s obsessed.
As the movers attempt to work and time runs out, Hector searches the house for the deck while the people around him are wrapped up in a very different drama. One that Hector is blissfully ignorant of.
“Hector was given a pack of King of Games cards, and inside was a valuable dragon.”
King of Games is a story of contrast. On one side, there’s Hector, a boy whose entire world is his King of Games card collection. On the other side, the reason the family is moving is slowly revealed along the way. Here, we’re locked into Hector’s point of view, focused on missing cards, while the actual move weighs heavily on his mother and father.
Kudos to Emperor Kaioyus as Hector. Casting kids is like buying a lotto ticket, and Kaioyus nails it. He knows exactly what the role demands: just be a boy. One who is fully absorbed in his mission, while acting oblivious as the world shifts beneath him. In the end, Cino Maradiaga tells a quietly poignant story about being a child in an adult world, and how the same day can mean something completely different depending on your age.
At just nine minutes, King of Games is packed with emotional honesty. Cino Maradiaga never loses sight of what story he’s telling and allows the audience to feel the rest.
King of Games screened at the 2026 Dances With Films.
"…Casting kids is like buying a lotto ticket."
