Little Boxes, Big Potential: Dungeon Roll and We Didn't Playtest This At All

This weekend I was in Denver visiting family for Memorial Day Weekend. The weather decided to give us a rain/hail/tornado cocktail in which we spent a fair amount of time indoors. This provided us the perfect excuse to visit a FLGS, since the only game I had packed in my bag was a copy of Avalon and we only had four players instead of the required five. 

We went to Enchanted Grounds, which has a unique setup as a coffee/game/comic shop. While they didn't have a great depth of titles on offer, they did have some games that I had never heard before. Nothing was really grabbing me in the realm of big publisher, high production value titles (though my brother in law did pick up Fantasy Flight's, Elder Sign.) 

Against my normal tastes I picked up two small, indie titles I hadn't heard of before, the strategic dice throwing Dungeon Roll and the comic We Didn't Playtest This At All. They are two cheap and cheerful titles that show what can be done with minimalist design. 

Dungeon Roll - Strategic Dice Based Dungeon Crawler - 1-4 Players - 15$

Dungeon Roll is a surprisingly deep dice game packed in a charming box. A quick google search will reveal it as yet another Kickstarter success story, which far surpassed it's initial asking level. It's clear that they put the extra cash into the quality of components. The box itself is a durable card stock, the custom dice are weighty and detailed, and all of the components have a certain level of shine to them. This eye popping presentation almost covers up the unfortunate flaws in the game itself.

At first read through, I was surprised by the complexity of the rules and I was excited by the possibilities for strategic depth. However when played with four players it turned out to be a time consuming slog. 

The "combat" system is a rock-paper-scissors mechanic where players match up the right type of hero with the right type of creature, which seems like it would sustain a game like this enough to keep it interesting until the closing turn. However, you are not always guaranteed to face monsters, instead I found that the majority of the game was spent opening chests and quaffing potions which can appear instead of monsters. Those who roll more potions and chests are always going to advance further in the game than those who consistently roll monsters, and it doesn't take long before a streak of luck completely separates one player from another. The strategy quickly takes a back seat to luck and the game bogs town as players heap up treasure with powerful abilities that allow them to skip through entire levels of the dungeon. 

The largest problem with Dungeon Roll is the amount of downtime that half of the players at the table will experience while the active player plays their turn. These turns can last ages if they get lucky rolls, during which you will quickly see the other players at the table lose interest. It can become agony, as what is meant to be a quick and light dice game becomes a one man romp through the worst that the flashy dice can throw at them. Next turn, rinse and repeat, player with the most points at the end wins. I was hoping for so much more!

Dungeon Roll succeeds at being a very casual game. It has a place at lunch tables with co-workers and as an appetizer before meat of a game night, which is it's intention, but it could have easily been the main course with a little more inspiration. 

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We Didn't Playtest This At All - Cards Against Humanity Killer - 2 to 10 players - 10$

"Presents, yes or no?"

This is a question from our first game of We Didn't Playtest This At All, which had me nearly shoot beer out of my nose, a second wave hit me when I found out that the present was kittens, and anybody who said no to presents lost the game, because why would you say no to kittens?

We Didn't Playtest This At All is an absurd party game in the line of Fluxx, Cards Against Humanity, and Apples to Apples. It's rules are simple...draw a card, play a card, and win. It's really as easy as that, but where the real fun comes in is the fact that the cards come so far out of left field. From playing a card that requires all players to say "Comic Sans is awesome",  to laser beaming other players out of the game, to card stealing penguins, banning the use of I, We, You, They, Us, We Didn't Playtest This At All is a complete riot. 

It suffers from the same problem as other party games unfortunately. The fun takes a sharp dive after you've played all of the cards, and it lacks any sense of strategy and gameplay. However, We Didn't Playtest This At All works in best in a sprint and will have your table out of breath before they realize it's just another game in the "Card with Something Funny Written On It" genre. There are two expansions, "We Didn't Playtest This Either" and "We Didn't Playtest This Pasted on Theme At All" which I will also be getting as this game does desperately need more cards in order to keep it fresh. 

I like this game because there is now, finally, a contender to the overplayed Cards Against Humanity and, for only 10$ for the base set, its a far more attractive alternative.