Super Dungeon explorer!

For this week we chose to play Super Dungeon Explorer.

The best and the worst sides of the game.

The words part of the game was the loot system they had. They had a counter that went up every time a character did damage. On the counter there where loot tiles placed around every 4^th tile. So the character that did the damage that would make the counter come to a loot tile have to draw a loot card and read for themselves what the card dose. Then choose if they want to keep it or not. If they don’t want to keep it they can choose to destroy the card to heal a player or to put it faced down so the other players playing a hero can choose to take the loot at the end of the round.

We thought that this was the worst part of the game because first of all there was not much looting going on in the game. And this is a dungeon game where the players battle against monsters and bosses. So with a bad looting system it loses a key part of what is needed in a game like this.

The only other loot that is in game is a treasure chest in each room (there is one room per hero being played.) If a player walks up to the chest and opens the chest (costing one action) then they get to draw a treasure card. They are better than the loot cards but because there are only one treasure chest for each player (one player can open all of them if he/she likes) makes them rather boring even though they might help you.

The best part of the game was the spawning of the monsters. The monsters were controlled by a player and he/she spawned, moved and attacked with them.

The thing that made the spawning interesting was that it made the gameplay different everyone because there was a player choosing how he or she wanted the monsters to be. This also differs from other dungeon games where the monsters have a fixed spawn before the game starts (in the rule book).

The core game system.

The core game system in Super Dungeon Explorer is moving and attacking. First of all it is the thing you do the most of in the game and you also have to move and attack to win the game because to win the game you have to kill the last of if you are not playing as the player controlling the monsters then you win when all heroes are dead.

At the start of each game all players roll a dice to see who gets to play for the monsters. When this is decided the player who got the highest and has to play as the monsters picks out what monsters he will be playing with. For us who played with one expansion had to choose from either lava elements or dragons.  There is a base monster type that will always get chosen as well. Then the player had to choose what mini boss he wanted to have.

When the monster player is done it is up to the rest of the players to roll another dice to choose who gets to choose a hero first.

When all players have chosen a hero then it is up to the monster player to choose how one of the rooms will look like. There are already fixed rooms they just choose one  and puts them on the board. Then the players get to choose the second one and so on. There all always as many rooms as there are hero players.

Then the monster player will put down one spawn in each room witch he will be able to spawn monsters from after this the hero players puts down where they want to start. They can put down there start token anywhere from an opening in the room and four tiles in. and then put down their heroes where they want to start. They are allowed to start in any tile touching the start tokens tile.

When this has been done it is the monster players turn to spawn monsters. Each monster has a skull and a number on it. This is how many skulls this monster costs. When the first spawning of monsters is the monster player is allowed to spawn monster of the cost of 4 skulls at each of the spawns.

Then the game starts.

Each round starts with that the hero with the highest will power takes the dice he or she needs and the monster player take the dice showing on the monster with the highest will power. Both players roll their dice to see who gets to go first, the heroes or the monsters.

I will write this as if the hero players got to go first.

The hero players diced who of them will have the first turn. Then the player will be able to have 3 actions and move the amount that it says on their character card. Actions consist of spells and attacking, if a spell or special action would cost more than one action then it will be stated on the character cards. Each player also has a potion that they can use for special abilities. Some character can have more than one potion at the time but mostly heroes can only have one.  For each damage that the player makes on monsters will make two counters move. The first counter is the loot counter that I have explained a bit already.  This counter moves up so that players can get loot. The counter is reset after each round (a round is finished when all heroes have moved and the monster players has moved all his or her monsters). The second counter is a boss counter. It never resets and counts up to when the last boss will be able to spawn. The counter also has a mini boss have way that lets the monster player spawn a mini boss. The last thing on the counter are skulls place on it, when the counter goes past it or lands on it the monster player will get one extra skull point for their spawning face. But only for the spawning turn that comes after the counter landed or went past it.

Then when a hero player is done with their turn it will be the monster players turn to act. The monster player is able to activate and use monster with the value of 4 skulls combined. You may not activate and use monster that has already been activated that round. Now they monster player will move the monster he chose to activate and do their actions. When he is done it is the next hero players turn (this is also up to the hero players to choose who goes second.) and this will go on in till all heroes have had their turn and the monster player has activated all his minions.

Then at the end of the round hero players get to look at any loot or treasure cards that have been placed upside down by a team mate and the monster player will spawn new monsters at each spawn point.

The hero players will win the game if they can kill the last boss. So when the last boss dies they win the game. The Monster player wins the game when he or she has killed all the heroes.

The most interesting system.

We thought that the most interesting system in the game was the spawning system for the monsters. It gave each game a new and interesting challenge and you could never learn how the dungeon would work because there was a player choosing what and where monsters would spawn. This is also not too common in this type of game. In most game that are in this type you will have a fixed spawn of monster, so the player controlling the monster will have to read in the rule book where and what they spawn.

Target group.

The target group on the box is 11 years and up. I can understand why they have this. It is a rather easy game with no real violence (nothing showing at least with no gore at all not even blood) in it. I believe the game is for both girls and boys. I would even think that the game could go down to around 9-10 in the age group though I would think that it is needed that someone older is with the first time so it will be easier to learn the rules.

Summary.

I think this game was really fun to play. I got to play as both a hero and monsters so I got to see both sides of the game. I liked to player monsters the most but this could be mostly due to the fact of bad planning when we chose what heroes we were going to play ( we didn’t pick a single healer) so it didn’t go to well. I got a bit disappointed when there was nearly no loot because when I heard the name I thought to myself that I would kill a shit tons of monsters and get a lot of awesome loot but nope just the monster killing. I also liked the dramatic ending we never really gave up even though somewhere deep down we knew we were finished for and this game didn’t have the same bad climax as the Battle Star Galatica had.

Well that is all for me this week!