by StormKnight
When I received the test copy of Dungeon Heroes, I was a little baffled. I hadn't payed much attention beyond "quick dungeon crawl", which sounds awesome, and didn't really know what to expect, but a bunch of tiles was not it!
This really isn't a "dungeon crawl". Mechanically, the game that comes to mind that it most closely resembles is Stratego.
Gameplay
The concept of the game is pretty simple. You start with an empty grid of a board. The 'monster' player, each turn, draws 4 tiles and places them, face down, on any empty spots on the grid. The tiles show traps, monsters, and occasionally items and treasures.
The other player controls the adventurers, each represented by a die. The dice don't get rolld - they just show many HP the character has left. D4 for the wizard, D6 for the rogue, D8 for the cleric, D10 for the fighter. On their turn, the adventurer player spends actions to move the adventurers around the board or acticate their special abilities (the cleric can heal, the wizard can look at face down tiles).
When a hero steps on a tile, they reveal it. If they've just found a trap or monster, it hurts (or does something else, probably nasty) to them, unless they are the right kind of hero - the rogue defeats traps and the fighter defeats monsters.
The heroes attempt to find 3 treasures. They are under a bit of a time limit though, because once the monster player runs out of tiles to place, they get to flip over and 'activate' monsters instead - the monsters can then actively chase down and attack the heros!
The theme is pretty light. Each adventurer has a single special ability, which does differentiate them quite a bit, but it feels mechanical rather than thematic. Monsters and traps just have a damage value (how many HP they cost the hero). There are a few special tiles - gas clouds that kill a hero automatically, sliders that move a hero one space to the side, teleporters that send a hero back to their start area, and equipment that gives a hero a one-shot use of a different heroes ability.
Game 1
At a random pick, I took the adventurers and Lisa played the monsters. She started off by placing her first 4 tiles directly across my four entrance spaces, so anyone but the rogue (who can move diagonally and is on an edge) would have to move onto one.
This seemed problematic! It seemed likely she had matched up the fighter with a trap, and probably had a monster by the rogue. I used the wizard to confirm the tile in front of the monster, then worked on moving the rogue around to free him up.
I had in mind that I would really need to free up my wizard. A few turns in, I realized this was a mistake - my wizard had no need to move, he just needed to stay back and scry tiles a lot!
I was able to dash the rogue across and claim the first treasure, and I accurately guessed where she put other treasures fairly easily. But getting to them was proving incredibly difficult, as she had surrounded them with teleporter and posion traps. One treasure was in a corner, and was surrounded with a teleporter or poison trap on all 3 adjoining spaces. I'd have to take one of them, so I had the fighter gt tleported back while the rogue rushed in to grab the treasure.
Around thn, however, I'd run out of time and she was able to start activating. She was able to kill the wizard almost immediately, which meant I was then going on blind luck and intuition for the rest of the tiles. My fighter put up quite a fight, but in the end the party was wiped out.
Wow. This felt very hard for the heroes.
We figured we should switch sides and try again. The game is pretty quick; probably took around 20 minutes or less.
Game 2
I drew my first four tiles with evil glee as I prepared to get revenge, and found I had two equipment tiles in the mix. Crud. I couldn't block her in.
She was wiser than I, and never moved her wizard, just keeping him back to reveal. I tried to set up the same sort of unbreakable layers of traps she'd laid for me, but just couldn't seem to pull it off. She focused heavily on eliminating the monsters, and used the rogue to make holes for the fighter in the sets of traps that I tried to build.
When it came time to activate, I had entirely too few monsters left. I did manage to kill her wizard, but she knew too much by then anyway - she'd already gotten two treasures, and had spotted the third, which she could get to through only one unknown tile.
I had a 6 strenght monster available, and was plaing very carefully to keep it out of the fighter's reach, but that meant I wasn't being able to attack either. She risked her cleric on the unknown tile (taking heavy damage but surviving, and grabbed the final treasure with my monster too far away to help stop her.
Wow, this felt very hard for the monsters!
I think the lesson here is that Lisa is much better at this type of game than I am.
Thoughts
* This was not a game for us. Overall it was just a "meh". The mechanics weren't interesting to us, and the thematic feel was almost non-existent. I really can't judge whether its a good game or not; that would require more plays than I'd be willing to give it to figure out how shallow or deep it is. I think it may appeal to people who like an abstract style feel but with a dose of luck. Mostly it was just...uninspiring.
* This is a quick playing game. It should be easy to get in a round of play over lunch, even switching to play both sides.
* It is easy to learn and teach.
* There's both luck in the tile draws and skill in play. With only two plays, it's hard to say how much of each there is. While I think our relative initial tile draws gave Lisa a much stronger start on her monster play than mine did, I overall felt that she'd outplayed me rather than outlucked me.
* Not sure how much variety there is. It seems like the wizard and cleric will rarely, if ever, move.
* I can see the potential for evolving strategy and counter-strategy. As players adopt one tactic, the opponent will adjust to it, leading to a new tactic. I think. Or perhaps there aren't enough possible tactics for that - very hard to tell.
* This felt more like an abstract than any sort of thematic game. I know, it's not an abstract as there's randomness and hidden information, but the abstract-game feel was very strong.
* My one component complaint that may or not be an issue with the regular game is that the tiles are the same size as the squares on the board, making it hard to flip one tile that is surrounded by others. The squares should be slightly larger than the tiles.