Board Game analysis: Drakborgen.

For the course Advanced Game Design we have been tasked with playing and analyzing the system of a board game of our choise. We did this in a group of 7 people and the game we chose was “Drakborgen”.

Core mechanics

The game is played with four people at the time where each player controls an adventurer exploring an abandoned castle and makes it out with as much treasure as possible. The player that manages to carry the most treasure out of the castle wins. The game board consists of a 5X5 grid where the corner squares are marked as castle entrances with one player starting in one each. Each square of the grid represents one room of the castle and players take turns moving between the rooms in order to get to the middle. When setting up the game two cars are placed on each tile, one “Labyrinth card” which designates the layout of the room and one “Room card” which represents what the player find in the room. The middle 3X3 squares are placed separate from the rest of the tiles as one of them includes the “Dragon’s den” room, where the players have the opportunity to obtain the most valuable treasure but at the risk of waking the dragon. Each player selects a character they want to play as; the different characters all have different stats in Strength, Agility, Psyche, Armor and Body Value. The characters also have different special abilities which allow them to pass specific situations easier (Opening doors, avoiding monsters, using projectile weapons etc.)
The core mechanic of the game is the turn based moving and exploring. On the player’s turn they move up to one square through an opening in the room they’re currently in. If the room is unexplored they take the card on that tile and place it back topside making sure to put it in the designated direction depending on where they entered from. For normal rooms they then look at the other card to see what happens as they enter the room, these cards range from combat encounters, finding useful items, finding valuable items, or activating traps. The starting player is designated to roll the sun die; this die has six sides, three with clouds, two with one sun and one with two suns. Once every turn the player rolls the die and adds the numbers of suns to a dial showing how much time the players have left to exit the castle, if this dial reaches 22 the game ends instantly.

If the player encounters an enemy they get to choose between fighting, running or wait. The player to their right draws a “Monster card” which contains a table for all monsters’ reactions depending on what the player active player do, these cards are all different meaning the active player can’t be sure how the encountered monster will respond as some monsters will attempt to escape themselves. Should the player’s action cause the monster to attack they two will engage in combat where the player who drew the monster card controls the monster. Combat works like a rock paper scissors game where each of the four stats represents a choice. Every type beats one other and is beat by another, every round the two parts pick one each and reveal them simultaneously to each other. The player uses their chosen character’s values versus the encountered monster and attempts to reduce the hit points of the monster before they are reduced to zero themselves. The fight continues until either part hits zero hit points or escapes.
The player may also use their skills outside of combat, paths are often blocked by doors, some rooms contain planks over deep pits, or traps. Most of these require the player to roll a d12 lower than their value in a specific skill or face some negative effect such as losing hit points, being unable to pass or losing treasure.

If the player manages to reach the dragon’s den in the middle of the castle they will be able to take one piece of treasure each round but must also take one of twelve “Dragon cards” of which one causes the sleeping dragon to awake. The longer the player stays in the dungeon to grab treasure, the higher the chance of them drawing the card which awakens the dragon. If the dragon awakes the player must succeed one dexterity roll for each piece of treasure they are carrying so more agile characters have an easier time escaping the dragon once awake. The players also have the option to fight the dragon but its high hit points and high stats means they will need to have found good equipment while exploring the castle and also be lucky, should the dragon be slain however the players are able to pick up treasures unmolested.
The game can end in three ways. All the players manage to exit the castle, all players are dead or the sun dial reaches twenty one. No matter what, the player that manages to carry out the most value in treasure wins the game. Should no player manage to escape, the game rules that the Castle wins the game.

Best parts

The game feature several examples of risk/reward systems, most notably the dragon’s den where they player is able to accumulate great amounts of treasure but at a higher and higher risk of waking the dragon which in turn will make it harder to escape the room the more treasures the player carries. Another example is whether or not to go straight toward the center of the castle and attempt to enter the dragon’s den or to explore the rest of the castle and potentially find useful items or treasures but risk the other players getting to the dragon’s den first and grabbing all the treasure within. Finally the players constantly have to consider the amount of time left on the sundial and if they should explore a bit deeper into the castle or leave in case the next couple of rolls comes up suns.
The game contains a lot of different rooms and encounters meaning that every game session will be different from the last. This method of randomly creating the layout of the castle causes the paths for each player to be different ad so the different players’ individual paths will not be fair, however since the game is random it is still fair in its unfairness, this causes the players to instead appreciate whenever they receive a boon of some sort, be it an open door, an item or some treasure, not to mention the joy of seeing another player get stuck in a giant spider web or stuck in a dead end behind a portcullis.

Worst parts

The game rules say that players should place each and every tile of the room before each session, the downside to this is that they have to stay on the board throughout the entire length of the game, they all lay side by side so moving one will make it push the rest who will then all have to be re-adjusted back to their original position. Also having them lay next to each other also makes it harder to pick up, turn and put back down face up. Keeping the cards placed thought the game didn’t add anything to the game and most of our sessions we simply took a card from the stack and placed in the room which caused the same randomized effect.

Every room has one Room card which is flipped the first time the room is entered and then discarded, this causes returning through explored rooms to be less fun than entering new ones. While it does promote exploring it also makes the way out of the castle less interesting.

The most interesting system

I would personally say the choice of player characters, each of the different characters play differently and some have special rules and items. For example, one character has a special ability to open doors automatically and see peek at one square per turn but has low stats and hit points, making them weaker in combat. This character also has high dexterity which means they will have less trouble making it out of the dragon’s den and over planks while carrying a lot of treasure. However, should this character get stuck behind a portcullis or get stuck in a spider web they would have to roll a d12 lower than their extremely low strength twice in a row in order to pass. Another character has a high amount of strength, armor and hit points but with no special abilities meaning they had no issues passing through doors that required them to roll for strength checks but also had no special way to avoid encounters or get through them easier. This character was easier to play for new players but might feel less interesting for more experienced players. Yet another character was stealth based with high dexterity and was able to hide from monsters and instantly kill them the next turn by rolling a d12 higher than 3. However, should they roll a 3 or lower they would lose their ability to kill monsters in one hit and be forced to avoid them or to fight them. This character also has mediocre stats in all but dexterity which caused the player to avoid combat as much as possible and also be venerable to traps requiring skill checks to escape.

The first and third examples (and the middle one as that character had terrible dexterity and psych stats) are good examples of min-maxing where some stats have been reduced to very low in order to increase others to very high. Doing this lead to the characters being completely different experiences to play as the play style of each focused on different things. The game contains around ten characters in total.
The game box declare that the game is recommended for ages ten and up, personally I think the game might be better suited for 13 and up as setting up the game, following all the mechanics and keeping the game in order tends to be really complex. That being said I think ten year old children might enjoy this game, especially if they understand the rules and/or have an older person to help them keep track of the many different aspects of playing the game.

Summary

The game systems works well in conjunction with each other to create an exciting and unique player experience every session. Letting the player select a character to play allows the player to nudge their experience in a direction of their choice without giving them too much control. The things out of the players’ control (the playing field, the room encounters and the sun dial) makes the game unpredictable even after a number of sessions where the player would inevitably recognize every card in the game which adds a lot of replayablity. The game’s combat system, while functional feels somewhat detached from the rest of the game, of course there needed to be some sort of system in place for players to battle monsters but the Rock Paper Scissors system slows the game down and might have been made more exciting with a number of dice rolls.

Overall the game creates a fun and interesting emulation of the Rougelike genre to be played around a table rather than on a computer. The combat is not the high-point of the game in any way but the game does convey the feeling of exploring rooms of an abandoned castle quite well which makes up for it. The exploration makes up for both the discovery and challenge aspects of enjoyment. Many cards have flavor text describing the item, character or event which adds to the game for players who likes to immerse themselves but can be skimmed over if the player only wants to play a board game without any fluff.