Board game understanding 2

This week I have played “Super Dungeon Explorer”.

Super Dungeon Explorer is a board game where the players controls their units on a grid in order to kill their opponents. One or two player will play as the evil consul and the rest as heroes. The consuls mission is to spawn and control monsters/creeps/bosses on the battlefield in order to kill all the heroes. The heroes mission is to kill the main boss, this by moving, attacking or taking other actions with their characters. The game ends when either all the heroes are dead or when the main boss is defeated. In order to play this game at least 2-6 players needed.

Best of Super Dungeon Explorer 

One of the best and most interesting things with Super Dungeon Explorer is the monster spawn system. This system works as the more monsters the heroes kills the more monsters may the consul deploy on the battlefield. This contributes to that it becomes harder for the heroes as better they are playing. The heroes can choose to not attack monsters, but then takes the risk of becoming attacked by these monsters and may get killed. The consul has also impact on have many monsters he/she may spawn. This by each time a monster is attacking a hero, so increases the amount of monster the consul must deploy on the battlefield.

Monsters has to spawn at a specific locations, these locations is next to a spawn beacon.  When we played, the consul received 3 spawn beacons. By destroying all beacons the consul can’t longer deploy its monsters. However, if all spawn beacons are destroyed the boss will arrive next round.

When we played, we focused on getting the spawn beacons destroyed but at the same time we wanted to avoid being attacked. It was very difficult to avoid being attacked by monsters since they was blocking roads and surrounded us.

Another good thing with Super Dungeon Explorer is the dramatic tension during the game. Even though it going badly for a player/team. Since the dices is in charge it is very dramatic when a player are about to die.

When we played, the consul player always won during the boss battle. This resulted to that the players wanted to play again just to manage to defeat the consul/win the game.

Worst of Super Dungeon Explorer 

One of the worst things with Super Dungeon Explorer is how the loot system works. As a dungeon crawler you want to receive as much loot as possible. The heroes are the only ones who can get loot, but the game is designed so the better it goes for the heroes the more loot they get. This means that when a player are about to die and need loot the most, he/she will not receive it.

I think the game designers have failed to balance the loot system since the heroes only get loot when the loot counter moved 3 steps. The loot counter moves whenever a hero attacks a monster or boss. This means that the more heroes who are still in game, the more loot the heroes receives. So it creates a positive feedback loop for the player as long as no one dies, since the chances getting loot decreases each time a hero dies.

Target group

The main target group would be both males and females of age 10 +. Since the game is quite complex it will be too hard for a very young person to understand and keep track of all elements. The game doesn’t contain mush violence and inappropriate things so it’s perfect for a younger audience.

I also think that this game attracts and fits people who likes to play Dungeon Crawling games since there are many similar elements.

Summary

Super Dungeon Explorer is overall a great game, but as I have said before there are some stuff that needs to be rebalance. The game itself has some interesting systems which makes it very entertaining to play and creates a dramatic gameplay experience.

I really enjoyed playing this game with my group and it’s indeed a game I would play on holidays with my friends.

That’s all for me!