Dungeon Roll Preview

Today's post will be about a dice rolling game that Tasty Minstrel Games currently is running a Kickstarter campaign for - Dungeon Roll.  They have provided me with a prototype of this game, which obviously means that it does not include the final components.  Though I'm pretty confident that the core game won't be changing, I would guess that some minor things like character balance and treasure token breakdown may change, so I'm going to classify this as a "preview" instead of a full fledged review.

Dungeon Roll is a simple press your luck dice game in the same vein as Martian Dice or Zombie Dice.  Each turn, you get to take the seven party dice and roll them.  Then, you (or your opponent, depending on if you're playing solo) will roll a number of dungeon dice equal to the current dungeon level (to start each turn this is level one), but with a minimum of three dice.  Now, you must use (discard) your party dice to kill any monsters that were rolled.  Each of your dice can defeat any number of the corresponding monsters, or one of a different monster.  (For example, if you rolled a "Fighter", which is the green face of the die in my prototype, he can defeat any number of Goblins - which are also green.  Or, he can defeat a single Ooze (blue) or Skeleton (grey).)  Any dragons that are rolled are set aside until after you have dealt with the other monsters.  Once all the sissy little monsters are defeated, you check to see if you have awakened the dragon - if there are at least three dice with a dragon face, then you must fight the dragon.  The dragon requires you to use three different types of party members to defeat him (which makes him tough - that and the fact that his skin is made out of diamonds, and he breathes fire!  Though they forgot to mention those last two things in the rules.)  If you successfully defeat the dragon, then you get a treasure!  Yay!  After you have defeated all of the piddly minions and either skirted around or defeated the dragon, you can finally use any potions that were rolled and open any treasures (these two faces are on the dungeon dice, not the party dice).  Drinking a potion lets you take one of your previously discarded party dice, roll it, and add it back to your party.  To open treasure chests, you can either use (discard) a single thief or champion die to open all of them, or you can use (discard) any other party member for each single treasure chest you choose to open.  Finally, you decide if you want to go to the next level of the dungeon, or escape with your life.  If you continue in the dungeon, though, you don't re-roll all of your dice.  You must continue with what you have left.  And, if you don't successfully complete your chosen level, then you get no experience points.  If you run, then you get experience points equal to the last completed level.  At the end of the game (three rounds), whoever has the most experience points wins!  And, unused treasure gives you extra experience points.

The key to going far - a favorable dungeon!

Whew - that was long winded.  But, since you might not be able to find the rules online, and since you're probably trying to decide whether this unpublished game is worth your money, I figured it's ok.

There are three questions that I feel need to be answered in this post.  First, what does Dungeon Roll add to this genre?  Well, it adds a couple of things in my opinion (which is the one that you're payin' the big bucks for right now).  First, it does the press your luck aspect of the game in a different way.  Instead of always rolling your dice and simply calculating odds, you actually have some knowledge.  Each time you decide whether you want to continue in the dungeon, you get to see your remaining party members.  If you only have two party members, then it might be time to retire - whereas if you still have six dice sitting in front of you, then it's probably a good decision to press forward.  The second thing that it adds to the genre is a "polymorph wand."  This is one of the faces of the party dice.  You may spend a polymorph wand to re-roll any number of dice in your party and/or in the dungeon (aside from dragons).  So, determining when you spend this, and which dice to re-roll is another interesting element.  Finally, there is treasure!  Treasure does two things - first, it increases your score (so there are two ways of scoring in Dungeon Roll: advancing safely in the dungeon, and looting treasure).  Secondly, it bails you out of sticky situations.  For example, one treasure lets you immediately leave the dungeon.  Many of the others can be used like a party member, and some are only for scoring.

The second (and probably most important) question is  - who would like Dungeon Roll?  To me, that's a really easy question - the same people that like Martian Dice and Zombie Dice would love Dungeon Roll.  At its core, the game is very similar - how many times are you going to roll the dice before you keep the score that you have, with almost every roll increasingly the likelihood that you "bust".  Now, whereas Martian and Zombie Dice really have very few other elements, Dungeon Roll has a few more strategic choices than that.  You must make decisions such as - should I use my treasure token, or keep it for a victory point at the end of the game?  Should I open the treasure chest, or keep my party full so that I can defeat the next level of the dungeon?  When should I use my party leader ability?  (You get a twice per game "party leader" ability that you can use - also, each "party leader" gives you an ongoing ability like allowing you to take potions earlier in the turn, or allowing a certain die face to be better.) 

A sample party - you choose how to use them.

The last question is probably equally important as the others - who won't like this game?  That answer is also easy.  If you are looking for a strategic game where the person that makes the best strategic decisions wins 75% of the time (or more), then Dungeon Roll is not what you are looking for.  As with any game that is based on rolling dice, Dungeon Roll has an incredibly high luck factor in it.  I've played the game and gotten a score of 40.  Then, I've turned around and played it again, only to get a score of a 14.  Was this because I used brilliant strategies the first time, but those strategies failed me the second time?  No!  It's because I rolled a lot of treasure chests and potions the first time, and rolled a lot of enemies the second time.  (Though, also, the first time allowed me a "party leader" ability which let me convert a goblin to my team - thus allowing me to reduce the total number of dungeon dice.  That helped, too.)  The other group of people that won't like this game are players looking for highly interactive games.  There are really only two forms of interaction while playing Dungeon Roll multiplayer: your opponent will roll the dungeon dice for you, and if you go before another player and score well, then it will force him to make potentially poor decisions in order to attempt to catch your score.

With all that said, what do I think about Dungeon Roll?  Overall, I think that it is a solid game, and that it excels at what it sets out to do.  It sets out to give you a die rolling experience with a little bit of dungeon crawling theme.  I think that it succeeds in this regard.  And, just like I feel that Yahtzee has a place in the world of gaming, I feel like Dungeon Roll fills a similar niche - but for someone that wants a bit more going on than Yahtzee provides.

If Dungeon Roll sounds interesting, and you're too impatient for Kickstarter, you might also check out Perudo (or "Liar's Dice"), Martian Dice, and Zombie Dice.

I would like to thank Tasty Minstrel Games for providing me with a prototype copy of Dungeon Roll in order to bring you this preview, and if you're interested in backing to on Kickstarter, here is a handy link.

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!

Catacombs Review

After hearing nothing but good things, I decided that it was time to hunt down a copy of Catacombs.

Do you like flicking games, like PitchCar and Crokinole?  Then I think you'll be in for a treat with Catacombs - if not, then you can probably stop reading, because you'll hate the game!  Catacombs is a fairly standard dungeon crawler - you're a hero running through various rooms killing monsters, acquiring money, buying items, and trying to kill the final boss.  The twist, though, is that both you and the monsters attack by flicking your disks!  If you successfully hit the monster, then they take damage.  If they hit you, then you take damage.  Some of your monsters will only be able to flick their own disk (do melee attacks), whereas others will be able to do ranged attacks, or even cast spells (thus adding more disks to the board, or affecting the disks in some other way).  If you are able to flick your way all the way to the final room and defeat the evil overlord, then you have won!  (Oh, and you've also beaten your friend who actually gets to flick the disks belonging to the bad guys.)

So, let me confess - I love dexterity games.  I really enjoy PitchCar, Crokinole, Clout, and many, many others.  And, as much as I love PitchCar, I don't really need to buy another game that does the exact same thing (though I have bought two sets of the base game).  Fortunately, Catacombs really has a different feel than any other dexterity game that I have ever played.  Between having different characters with different abilities, monsters that deal you damage, items that you can purchase, and even having the ability to be incapacitated, Catacombs truly gives you the feel of a dungeon crawler, but one that appeals to dexterity fans.

The Barbarian is surrounded!

My next pro for Catacombs is that I like how they set up "obstacles" in the different rooms.  The game would be fairly boring if each turn the heroes and monsters setup on opposite sides of the board from each other and just shot directly at one another.  Fortunately, in Catacombs, each room has 5-6 "obstacles" (large grey disks) that represent various formations (whether pillars, or stones, or something else) in the room that monsters and heroes can hide behind.  These obstacles aren't in the same place in every room, either - there are 3 different boards, each with the obstacles in different places; and each board is double sided (which flip the start zones) so that there are 6 total obstacle configurations.  I thought that the entire concept of having obstacles in the room was brilliant, and it really adds to the enjoyment of Catacombs.

The final pro that I will mention for Catacombs is that it is very replayable.  There are a lot of different rooms, monsters, evil overlords, and even items in the game - enough that you will not use all of them in any given game.  This helps give you the feeling that you're not playing the same game over and over.  Honestly, I enjoyed the game (and the dexterity element of it) enough that I could probably play the same game over and over.  However, there is no need - each time I play, I will get a (mostly) fresh experience.  (By the way, did I mention that I love dexterity games, and that Catacombs does dexterity well?  That's another 3-4 pros right there!  Dexterity is fun.)

The Wizard with his summons

With all that I love about Catacombs (and, really, I do love the game), there is one major nuisance in it.  Disks go flying off the board all of the time.  I really think that this game would be ideally played in some kind of enclosed board, where all of your excess disks would be caught - possibly on a pool table (but where the pockets are filled in).  Plus, when a disk goes flying off the board, you are supposed to place it back where it left.  Right - this actually turns into where your best guess is that it might have left the board because, ultimately, you might have no idea.  But, that's ok - as long as everyone is playing the game for fun, I think that this con will not hinder your enjoyment.

Ok, maybe there are actually two major nuisances.  The second one is that it is really, really hard to tell what each disk hit after a shot.  When three or four disks are clumped together, and you shoot a piece into the group (hoping to hit several of them) and they all go flying, it's very difficult to determine which ones were hit directly (thus damaged) and which ones were hit indirectly (which does not deal damage).  If you're playing with someone ultra-competitive who isn't willing to realize that this is a game and should be played for fun, this can be incredibly frustrating.  

The last thing I will mention is this - when flicking, it might be a good idea to have someone else hold the gameboard down.  I have actually watched people flick the board while playing.  Their disk was towards the edge of the board, and they missed their disk entirely and moved the whole board about 6 inches (and essentially caused a giant earthquake in the game).  I laughed at them for doing this, but then a few minutes later a different player did it again!!  I have not done this, so I am going to continue pointing fingers at them and laughing (not really) when they do this.... at least until I do it myself.  Either way, it's something that you probably want to be aware of, so that you can avoid this problem.

Overall, I give Catacombs a 9.0/10.  I love dexterity games, and this one gives me a fresh new feel on a genre that I love.  Well done.

If you like dexterity games, you should check out PitchCar, Caveman Curling, and Fastrack.

I would like to thank Sands of Time Games for providing me with a review copy of Catacombs.

Dungeon Lords Review

A game that I traded for a while back on BoardGameGeek since it looked quirky (and I didn't want the other game) was Dungeon Lords.

In Dungeon Lords, you, evil genius ("evil"? slanderers!) are trying to protect your home, which some stupid townspeople are calling a "dungeon." In fact, those townspeople are really annoying and you'd like to eat them, but for the most part, you're leaving them alone. Though you're hungry. Anyway... you are simply focusing on building your glorious underground mansion - and then you hear that the obnoxious townspeople have hired people to come attack you! So, as any good home protector would do, you also hire monsters and set traps to keep people from breaking in. After all, you would protect your home if people tried to break in, right? How this plays out is that the game is played in 2 "years" each consisting of 4 rounds. In each round, you get to send your minions out to do tasks for you. These tasks include collecting food, convincing the townspeople that you're nice (which I find highly amusing), mining gold, digging tunnels, recruiting imps, building traps, hiring monsters, and building rooms. After the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th rounds, adventurers will come towards your dungeon, and at the end of the 4th round they will attack it (how rude!). Hopefully you have collected traps and monsters! When they attack, you are able to use your traps and monsters to defend against them, and fighting is fought over a series of up to four rounds. Each round, if there are surviving adventurers, they will conquer one part of your dungeon (fortunately they will suffer fatigue first, which will injure and possibly even kill them). At the end of the four rounds, if there are any adventurers left, they give up and go home (claiming total victory over the "Wimpy Overlord" - I told you that they are slanderers!). After two years, you count up your victory points based on things like "Most Evil" and "Most Unconquered Rooms" along with negatives for having had tiles conquered and other bonuses for things like number of adventurers captured.

Which ones are the good guys?

The first amazing pro for Dungeon Lords is the theme. The theme is utterly brilliant, as I have never played a reverse dungeon crawler. In fact, after the first year, you deal with harder adventurers - because of some magic called "Leveling Up." I find the theme to be incredibly enjoyable, and whereas you might be able to take these mechanics and make a different game out of them, I don't think that it would have the sheer amount of fun as Dungeon Lords.  (So, another pro - Dungeon Lords is fun!)

Second, I really like how the minion placement works. This is really the crux of the game, as it is how you build your dungeon (thus this is a "worker placement game" or, more specifically, a "minion placement game"). Any given round you have two actions which you cannot perform (based on what you performed in the previous round). From the remaining actions, you select three and place them in order on your board. All players reveal, and then in turn order all players place a minion on their first choice, then all place on their second, and finally on your third choice. After this, all of the actions are performed in order, and normally the last person to place a minion on that action has the biggest benefit. However, there are only three slots on each action - so in a four player game it is possible to not get to place your minion if you wait too long. So, you need to balance waiting with making sure that you will get to perform an action. You also have to balance when you want to place various actions - after all, you can't have the best position on all of the different actions. And while you're trying to position yourself to be able to buy the best monster, your opponents are probably doing the same thing! This flows very well but adds a lot of depth to the strategy of the game.

The third pro that I will mention about Dungeon Lords is that fighting the adventurers (once you understand the rules) is straightforward yet engaging. Essentially, every round they attempt to take over one section of your dungeon. You can place a trap and a monster to try to kill them. After your trap and monster damage them, they might heal or cast magic (if they have a priest or wizard) and then they experience fatigue. If they're still alive, they conquer a room. There's no dice rolling or complicated comparisons. Each monster does a certain amount of damage; each trap does a certain amount of damage (though this can be reduced by an adventuring Rogue). Yet, with the system put in place, there are still different types of adventurers, each adding an important and different element to the game.

Worker imps look awesome!

The final pro that I will mention is that the design of the gameboards is amazing. Having not played Dungeon Lords in a few months, I was able to pull out the game and remember 97% of the rules from the boards themselves - it's all there! I think many other games would benefit from looking at how Dungeon Lords laid out it's components in a compact yet helpful way.

With all that said, my biggest con for Dungeon Lords is that there are a lot of rules that you can easily forget. If you're like me, then you will often have a few months between two plays of any given game (because I have "a few" others to choose from). Whereas the gameboards really help to jog your memory in Dungeon Lords, chances are that you will forget some of the smaller rules - like moving one step towards the "nice" side of the evil-o-meter after having a dungeon tile conquered. That one, specifically, is clearly marked on the gameboard, but there are enough small rules that unless you play it on a regular basis, some will probably be missed.

Overall, I give Dungeon Lords a 9.0/10. I almost slipped this score down a bit, but eventually decided not to. I really like Dungeon Lords - I think that it has a solid theme and mechanics that flow very well. And, even as a Dark Overlord, the game doesn't have a dark or creepy feel, so it's theme is really open to everyone.

If you like Dungeon Lords, you should also check out Age of Empires III, Cookie Fu (if you like quirky themes), and Through the Ages (which is by the same designer as Dungeon Lords).

Legend of Drizzt Review

One of my very first reviews (I believe it was actually my second overall review) was of Castle Ravenloft. I enjoyed the game, but felt like it had limited replayability. Now that Wizards of the Coast has made two more Dungeons & Dragons titles, I was willing to try again - this time with Legend of Drizzt.

In Legend of Drizzt (just like in Castle Ravenloft), you are playing Dungeons and Dragons as a board game. This means that the scenarios and monsters are preset, but it gives you the opportunity to play with all of your friends without any of them having to run the game as the GM. Each player takes on the role of a hero and the players collectively attempt to accomplish the goal of the scenario (beat the big dragon, recover the treasure - you know, something heroic). Each turn, the players are able to move twice, or move and attack (or attack and then move). After doing this, if they are adjacent to an unexplored edge of the board, they can reveal a new dungeon tile (and a monster). If they don't explore, then they have an encounter (which never ends well, especially if you are near volcanic vents). Finally, the active player must move all of the monsters that he controls. Play continues like this until one of the heroes has died or until the heroes have accomplished their mission.

The first thing that I like about Legend of Drizzt is the same thing that attracted me initially to Castle Ravenloft - I enjoy that I am able to take part in a nice role-playing adventure without all of the setup time. Compared to a normal campaign of Dungeons and Dragons, you can very quickly start (and play) a game of Drizzt.  And yet, though the game is brief compared to a normal campaign, the scenarios are very well done and I did not feel like the lack of a GM made the game any less enjoyable.

The next thing that I like about Drizzt is that you can customize your character, and that there are several characters to choose from - including some characters that are villains in some scenarios and heroes in others (I thought that this was a nice touch). There are significantly more heroes than players allowed in a game, which means that if you play the game repeatedly, you can use different characters each time. In addition, you are able to customize the attacks and "powers" that your character has each game, which allows you to even play the same character differently and tailor him to the scenario that you are playing.

A third pro that I think is interesting about Legend of Drizzt is how monster control works. On a player's turn, he controls all of the monsters that he has revealed on previous turns. However, so that you don't have to keep track of which instance of a given monster each player revealed, if there are several copies of a monster on the board (such as a Spider Swarm), the player controlling that monster will have to activate each copy of it on the board. So, if you are not paying attention to some of the smaller monsters, you must be careful that you don't allow too many copies of them out on the table, or else they will start activating very quickly! Whereas this is a fairly minor rule, I thought that it was a nice touch to the game.

The final pro that I will mention about Drizzt relates to the replayability issue that I had in Castle Ravenloft - I really like that they have added different kinds of scenarios. Now, instead of each scenario being strictly cooperative, some scenarios are team based, some are cooperative, and some are even competitive! The monsters that are encountered are still the same, but these different scenario types completely change the strategy with which you play the game - thus allowing the playing experience to stay a bit more fresh.

However, with that said, I still felt that the replayability of the game was a bit lacking. My biggest problem with Drizzt was that you are experiencing the same encounters and monsters every time through the game. Yes, there will be some games where you don't encounter one specific type of monster, but in essentially every game that we played, we ran into the same Feral Troll, Spider Swarm, and Hunting Drake. The scenarios are nice, and I do honestly like them, but the problem is that every scenario involves fighting through the same handful of monsters until you either die or get to whatever aspect of the scenario sets it apart from all of the others. Either way, 75% of the game deals with fighting the same grunts as in every other scenario.

The only other real con that I had for Drizzt was the opposite of the first pro that I mentioned. I really like that you can quickly pick up and play a short scenario of Dungeons and Dragons - but the cost in terms of gameplay is that your character will not really develop very much. None of the heroes are able to level up beyond level 2 (and often don't even get that far). This means that you won't have the satisfaction of the character truly becoming "yours." He will still feel like the out of the box character that he was at the beginning of the game.

Overall, I give Legend of Drizzt a 7.0/10. Adding the different kinds of scenarios helped address my largest problem with Ravenloft, and so it helped my score to go up a full point over what I gave to Castle Ravenloft! If you enjoyed the previous games in this series, then I fully believe that you will enjoy Drizzt as well. If you have been curious about the series, then I would recommend that you play them - they are definitely worth playing! I would simply recommend that (if possible) you play them a couple times before deciding whether you want to invest the money into purchasing your own copy.

For a second take, check out this Review of Legend of Drizzt on Play Board Games. And, if Legend of Drizzt sounds interesting, you might also want to check out Talisman Revised 4th Edition, Mage Wars, and Game of Thrones Living Card Game.

I would like to thank Wizards of the Coast for providing me with a review copy of Legend of Drizzt.

Castle Ravenloft Review

This review will be of Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game (I ran out of catchy intro's). I thought this game looked pretty neat and I was excited when I got to play it a couple of times.

Castle Ravenloft is a dungeon crawler that uses the Dungeons & Dragons 4.0 rules and can be played with 1-5 players. The main difference is that the scenario is setup for you so that you don't need a Dungeon Master, and you also don't have to worry about keeping up with stat sheets, etc, as the game takes care of a lot of the paper & pencil part of D&D.

As with any role playing game, in Ravenloft you represent a hero that is trying to save the world, kill the evil bad guy, rescue a princess, get piles of treasure, etc. I don't know what all the scenarios are in Ravenloft as I only played a couple, but I know that there are several that can be played through. Specifically, you have to do all of these things before your character dies off and, true to form, this is the case with Castle Ravenloft. You lose by getting your character killed off (you have a few revives but once you're out, you're out).

When playing Ravenloft, I was very impressed. I thought that the dungeon crawling experience went well, and I enjoyed the cooperative nature of the game. There were traps that we encountered, monsters that we had to kill, and the game was very engaging and challenging. The game was so much fun that we immediately decided that we needed to play again using a different scenario. This leads to the biggest drawback for Castle Ravenloft...

Ravenloft really only needs to be played once. Once you have played the game, you should be happy and put the game back down and move on. Maybe play it again next year. It plays essentially the exact same way the 2nd time through because all of the monsters are the same until you get to whatever the final monster or challenge is (this part does vary based on scenario). In most cooperative games when the players are going up against the board there is an element of change each time through and so you feel like you are playing a different game (though similar). This is not the case in Ravenloft, and it feels more like deja vu than anything else.

With that all said, I have to give Ravenloft an overall score of 6.0/10. If I had played it once, it probably would have gotten in the 8.5-9.0 range, but when a game is only fun to play through once and has an MSRP of $60, it is hard for me to give it a great score. My recommendation to you is find a copy of it that you can try out and play it through - you'll probably like it, but then never play it again.