Dungeon boss game review
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Typical game in progress with the plains of passage and unique boss tiles in the play area. Once this is done, treasure mound tokens and enemies are randomized on the board and you are ready to begin playing. The decks of cards are separated out, the boss enemy picked, tiles randomized and tokens set around the board. Setting up Shovel Knight Dungeon Duels is pretty quick and only takes about 10 minutes. This of course did not work out at all! Now that we understand how the game plays, it makes sense that the boss tile room is quickly explained before the 20+ pages explaining the tiles unique to each boss. When we read it we weren't sure which bosses used the boss tile room, and instead thought the boss was supposed to be fought using their specific tiles. What threw us off initially was that the boss tile room was explained before the unique boss tiles stacked under the beginning plains of passage tiles. There is also a decent number of pages dedicated to explaining all of the included tokens, cards, and tiles. This includes all the features specific to that particular boss. While the rule book is really long, nearly half of it is made up of detailed explanations for how each of the unique boss enemy tiles work. The rule book is very organized and uses lots of images to explain the game play. The models are very cool and fun to play with even though the standees for the 2D game are also really colorful and well designed. These include shovel knights, enemies and all of the bosses. The 3D version backed on Kickstarter came with just over 50 models. There is a 2D- and 3D-version of the game. Games go quickly so you will want to play again.The four different types of loot cards have far more in them than will usually be used in a game.Treasures and enemies added to incoming tiles are randomized.The plains of passage tiles are double-sided, and them and the boss tiles are randomly stacked together to randomize the game. Each game is made up of the five plains of passage tiles along with five tiles that match the end boss and the boss room.The AI cards show where the boss moves to and which shovel knights are affected by that movemvent. Boss enemies have unpredictable movements that are controlled by their own unique set of AI cards.There are 11 different bosses, each with their own set of tiles that the shovel knights must pass through before the end fight on the double-sided boss room tile.There are several things that add to the replayability of this game, including: The tiles, the models, and all of the cards - which include loot, equipment, spawn, relic, hero, and boss cards, all tie into the theme perfectly and were well thought out. At the end of each round a new tile is added to the right side which pushes the leftmost tile off the play area. In keeping with the side-scrolling effect of the original video game, the board game utilizes a tiled play area. Like the video game, the board game has the same retro feel and incorporates many of the enemies you would expect: propeller rats, wizzems, boneclangs, king knight, the enchantress, and many more!
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The theme of Shovel Knight Dungeon Duels falls along the lines as the original video game, which was formatted as an homage to 8-bit video games. It matches the theme and we like it, but the sentences are fairly close together making it more challenging than other fonts. If we had to pick something that frustrated us it would be that the font in the rule book can at times be hard to read. Even though you may plan ahead, once the enemies take their turn at the end of each round, it is possible for a shovel knight to get knocked back and/or be unexpectedly defeated if you were then caught on a tile that rotated off the play area. Players are limited to seeing only the next tile that will slide into the play area so there is always an element of surprise. We really like the side-scrolling element of the game. However, even if a shovel knight is defeated, you are able to respawn on your next turn and grab a loot card along the way. Any enemies left behind can come after the shovel knights during their turn so you must plan your movements strategically if you want to stay on the board. It is fun, has lots of unique elements and though it is competitive, there is a cooperative aspect to it. Shovel Knight Dungeon Duels is a great homage to early video games. Once we cleared up where we went astray, the game made much more sense and we had a great time. On our first play we misunderstood some of the rules and ended up with some really weird consequences. Overall our group really enjoyed playing this game our second time. Our play time (not including setup): 1 hour 15 minutes