Sometimes, on a Tuesday, we’ll accidentally schnuffle away a new release for a ‘playtest’. Such copies later become available at a discount, others remain company ‘assets’ for continuous RnD purposes (we do design games here too you know!)
Recently Dungeon Fighter became the latest victim of schnuffling, mostly because I’d told our youngest playtester (of 3.5 years) that she could play it. That’s what our supplier blurb said anyway, but it turns out that ‘3 years up’ in the supplier blurb actually translates to 14+ on the box packaging. Oops. However, the rules are relatively simple, for adults, and there is a cardboard tower to build (hooray!) And I can now confirm that the game can be played properly with the younger generation…
The overall goal in Dungeon Fighter is to escape a 3 level dungeon, that is randomly drawn from 7 or 8 tiles. Each tile contains a few rooms and features which you must traverse through to make it to the next tile. You earn gold for defeating monsters (who appear at the rate of one per room) which you can then spend in shop rooms on the first three cards drawn from the equipment deck.
The thing you’ll be doing most is fighting monsters (co-operatively) and this is done by throwing a single dice onto the gameboard, which looks a bit like an archery circle. Just throwing, however, would be too easy, so the dice must bounce onto the board from the table first. Still sound easy? Good, because certain equipment, monsters and rooms have additional throw requirements. So you may be in a room that requires you to roll with your eyes closed, against a monster that requires you to flick the dice off your hand, with a piece of equipment that requires you to bounce the dice twice off the board before landing on it. Make sure your play area is good for dice containment or you’ll continually be looking for errant dice under the sofa.
All in all this makes for an entertaining, if not strategy-lite, dungeon romp that lasts around 30-60 minutes and is almost guaranteed to get you off your seat for more than just snacks during a game. Sounds exhausting? Buckle up and open Arkham Horror for a good 2-3 hour Cthulhu fest instead…
thelegendofbilbo 