Assault on Doomrock Preview

[This post is a preview for a game currently seeking funding on IndieGoGo.]

Assault on Doomrock, designed by Tom Stasiak, is a game currently seeking funding on IndieGoGo. It is a fantasy themed cooperative game that combines a ton of great features and mechanisms. It has players assuming the roles of heroes (that have some rather interesting and comedic traits) who are traveling to the titular Doomrock to fight and defeat the big bad. It does a lot of neat things and really aggressively trims the "fat" from what has become the prevailing model for these types of "dungeon crawl-y" games.

Ready for adventure! Initial set-up for the myriad decks of cards.

Gameplay in Assault on Doomrock is split up into two distinct parts. First, heroes will have to make choices about how best to spend their time exploring and encountering the randomly generated locations of adventure mode in order to visit shops, gather gear, and level up. There will always be three areas available for the players to travel to.



Each area card will have several locations the players can encounter for a variety of effects, some positive and some negative. Most actions players take during this phase of the game will cost a certain number of time units, which the players need to spend wisely - because once these are depleted, the heroes will have to enter combat with enemies.

Combat in Doomrock is done with dice, but not in the traditional way. Each hero will have ability cards which can be activated with specific dice. Before each combat round begins, each player will roll their dice and assign them to corresponding ability cards. Once combat proper begins, each hero will be able to activate each ability once for every die she had previously placed on her hero's ability cards.

If the Rogue had two 6's on her Poisonous Stab ability card, she would be able to activate that ability twice this combat round.

Combat in Doomrock is different from what one might expect from a fantasy game in another way - tactical positioning and movement is very abstracted. Heroes and monsters are represented on the field of battle by cardboard discs. These discs are either adjacent to each other or they aren't (distant). Heroes and monsters can use melee attacks on enemies adjacent to them, and ranged attacks on enemies who are distant from them. 

I had a lot of fun playing Assault on Doomrock. The art is fantastic and beautiful, and I really like how it is set in a fantasy world with the familiar structure that provides, but Tom has put a very funny twist on everything in his take on traditional fantasy that I find delightful.

I also really like how Tom has separated the two parts of the game, the adventure phase and the battle phase. The adventure phase feels much more like a traditional "euro" co-op game, where players are working against the clock to try to find all the benefits they can while avoiding the unavoidable negative events. 

Combat in Doomrock is much more simplified than in similar games, but no less interesting. The fun part in pretty much any tactical combat game of this kind is gaining new abilities, and then getting to use those abilities in unique ways. Rarely is the "OK I have 5 movement, and I can go here, or here...or here..." part where very much of the fun lies. Doomrock cuts all of that out, and lets players focus on collaborating to assign and use their dice most effectively. 

One thing I didn't mention about the game is that there is no board. In fact, everything that isn't a token in this game is a card, so while set-up does take a little bit of time, the game has plenty of randomized elements involved in set-up, so there are likely millions of possible variations this game could take each time it is played.

Doomrock is a really fun game, and while I mentioned it does abstract out a lot, it remains a very solid, very engaging and involved cooperative game that will take a lot of teamwork and careful planning in order to succeed. 

If you think Assault on Doomrock sounds like a game you would like to play, head on over to the IndieGoGo page now to pledge your support to receive a copy when it releases this fall. The campaign is currently funded at nearly 200%, so now we're just looking towards stretch goals!

Dungeon Heroes Review

Dungeon Heroes, from Gamelyn Games and designer Michael Coe,  is a 1-2 player tile-laying and bluffing game that sets a team of heroes (a Mage, Warrior, Rogue, and Cleric) against a wily dungeon keeper and the monsters that lay in wait.

Gameplay is pretty simple. The Dungeon Lord gets to draw 4 tiles, and places them face down on the board. These tiles are things like monsters, traps, shifting floors, portals, and loot for the heroes.

After the Dungeon Lord has taken her turn, the Hero player gets four actions to move and act with his heroes. Each hero also has a special ability. The Wizard can move one space either orthogonally or diagonally, and can also spend an action to reveal a tile.

The Warrior can only move orthogonally, but is very good at fighting - any monster tile he lands on is instantly eliminated.

The Rogue can move both orthogonally and diagonally and can disarm traps on the dungeon floor.

The Cleric can move orthogonally and can spend an action to heal an adjacent ally.

Once all of the dungeon tiles have been placed on the board, the Dungeon Lord's turns become a bit more active. At this point, the Dungeon Lord can do the following for one action each:

• Reveal a dungeon tile (if the tile was a monster, replace the tile with a monster figure)
• Move a monster figure 
• Attack a hero with a monster figure

After all the tiles are revealed and there are no more monster figures on the board, the winner is determined.

"hmm...this tile is surrounded by traps...could it be loot??"

If the Hero player has a clear path to reach the remaining treasure tiles needed to win (3 out of 4) with at least 1 hero surviving, the Hero player wins. Otherwise, the Dungeon Lord wins.

"ack! Poison gas!! Well, it's been nice knowing you heroes!!"

Dungeon Heroes is a light, fairly abstract game - though with some nice art and character abilities to give a sense of theme, with just the right amount of bluffing and luck. Set up is a breeze, as is teaching and learning the game. I personally found the Dungeon Lord's side to be a little more fun to play. I really like the bluffing and planning of the dungeon much more than the (sometimes) guesswork the Hero player has to deal with. As the Hero player, the challenge of trying to outguess the Dungeon Lord's feints was very fun as well, but as the Dungeon Lord, I had to deal with the randomness of the tile draw, as well as the interesting decisions that came up when I had drawn not monster or traps, but loot that would benefit the Heroes. Do I keep it far away from them, or bluff and put it right in front of one of them, hoping they'll avoid it just because I put it right in front of them?

I would give Dungeon Heroes a solid 7.0/10. It doesn't reach for the stars or reinvent the dungeon crawl, but what it aims for it does very, very well. It is a fun, two player battle of wits with a light fantasy theme. If you think you'd enjoy a short, relatively simple 2 player bluffing game, I'd strongly recommend checking out Dungeon Heroes from Gamelyn Games.

Dungeon! Review

Recently, Wizards of the Coast decided to re-print a classic game from the 1970's - Dungeon!

In Dungeon! each player takes on the role of a different adventurer with the goal of looting the dungeon.  Each character has a certain amount of loot that they are attempting to collect before returning to the Great Hall for victory.  Each turn, you can move your adventurer up to five spaces - but you are stopped if you go into an uncleared room or chamber.  In these rooms and chambers, you must fight a monster.  After selecting the monster of the appropriate level, you find the number that your adventurer must roll.  After rolling the dice, if you have rolled high enough to defeat the monster, then you gain loot (if you are in a room or the monster had stolen loot).  If you do not defeat the monster, then you roll again to see what happens - this can range from nothing, to losing some of your loot, to being killed and having to start over.  Turns continue in this manner until one player has collected enough loot to win and successfully returns to the Great Hall (with that loot).

Find the number your character needs to roll

The first pro for Dungeon! is that it is easy to teach anybody.  Now, this pro comes with a caveat.  Though it is easy to teach anybody, that doesn't mean that adults will enjoy the game.  This should probably be considered a kid-friendly game more than a non-gamer game.  However, with that said, it seems like the kind of game that you could enjoy with young children.  The amount of luck and die rolling involved would help put both children and adults on approximately equal footing when it comes to chances of victory, which I think could add even more to the children's enjoyment.

Oh, and the next pro for Dungeon! is that it's inexpensive.  A suggested retail price of $20 for a full board game with any kind of role playing element (however small) is essentially unheard of.

Now that I have listed all of my pros for Dungeon! it's off to the cons.  There is a ridiculously overpowered strategy in the game.  Do you want to know what it is?  It is to roll the dice well.  This strategy will defeat any other strategy that players choose to implement (like not rolling well).  Basically, the entire game is dependent on luck.  The higher you roll against monsters, the better your chance of victory.  However, as opposed to games like Runebound where you defeat the smaller monsters to level up and get better weapons before continuing onto the harder monsters, you will have essentially the same chances of defeating a huge monster at the end of the game as you would at the beginning.  (The one exception is that you might be able to get a "magic sword" which can give you a +1 or +2 bonus to your rolls - normally a +1; again, unless you roll well.)  So, if you're going to go after gigantic monsters, you might as well do it right at the beginning before you have loot to drop.  But, then you might get really good loot and drop it later where someone else can go get it.

You better play friendly with those dice!

The next con for Dungeon! is related to the first con.  If you choose the sub-optimal strategy (you don't roll well), then you are going to be very frustrated in this game.  I played a game of Dungeon! where one of the players spent significantly more time without loot than with loot.  Each time they earned any loot, they immediately lost to another monster (of a level that they were "recommended" to be fighting), and then would have to spend the next several turns fighting that monster in order to re-gain their loot.  After all, once you've already lost all of your loot, there's not really much downside to losing to a monster.  However, it can be incredibly frustrating to play the game and constantly roll slightly too low to beat the monster - just to see your high roll get used by determining how the monster smashes you in return.  (This is the kind of frustration that makes people want to flip the table.  I'm not condoning this action - just stating that this is an example of what could possibly cause someone to want to do that.) 

That's really all there is to Dungeon!  Overall, I give it a 6.0/10.  And, honestly, I only gave it a score that high because it can be played with kids.  However, like Uno, just because your kids will enjoy it doesn't necessarily mean that you will.  If you're looking for a highly luck based game with a lot of die rolling and a slight role playing element, then you should check out Dungeon!  Otherwise, you should probably stay away.

If you are looking for games for children, you might also check out Hey, That's My Fish! or Scallywags; or, if you're looking for a role playing game, you might check out Runebound or Legend of Drizzt.

I would like to thank Wizards of the Coast for providing me with a review copy of Dungeon!