ONE DECK DUNGEON (2016)

PLAYERS	TIME	DESIGNER	PUBLISHER
1-2	30 mins	Chris Cieslik	Asmadi Games

This game is tough. Like really really tough. It wants nothing more than to chew you up and spit you out.

The game has a set of door cards and you must take your brave adventurer through each one and deal with whatever monster or trap is on the other side.

This is done with dice rolled, with different colours representing different abilities.

Your character starts at lvl 1, with limited dice and not much in the way of special abilities.

But each conquest rewards you with more dice, or skills, or points towards leveling up. The beauty is each enemy card has all three rewards available, and you choose each time which you want.

I like the freedom to you characters improvement. It’s a nice touch.

Single plays are really hard, and thankfully there is a campaign mode where progress (win or lose) is saved and built upon, meaning that the only thing you need to over come is time.

A fair amount of the difficulty comes from the randomness. Monsters can turn up in any order, and I’ve sometimes been taken out very early on.

And the dice rolls can really let you down. The amount of fights I’ve had where it’s felt futile with what dice have shown me is frustrating.

I will say that some gamers will be put off by the difficulty. But don’t go into this thinking you’ll be winning most of the time. You’ll probably be lucky to get many boss kills under your belt.

But that’s the beauty of the game. Walk in knowing that you’ll be challenged, and don’t give up. Because when that rare victory turns up, it’ll taste all the sweeter for it, because you fought hard for it.

A good little solo game in a small box. Great to take around with you and gives you a lot of challenge.