BOARD GAME REVIEW: GLOOMHAVEN (2016)

Gloomhaven is the current number 1 game on boardgamegeek.com. It is a dungeon-crawl type game from Isaac Childres, and to describe it as a dungeon-crawl is both painfully accurate and yet doing the game a great disservice. I also have barely scratched the depths of the game for its "full" review, so this is more a first impressions (even after playing for 30+ hours).

In this game, you and a bunch of your companions are playing the role of adventurers from the titular city. Every session of this, you will sit down, set up a dungeon and then try to complete it (normally by killing all the enemies). You move around a grid-based map, get experience and items, and then succeed or fail. Between missions, you can buy items, go on a small text-based adventure on the road and in the city (literally just a card with 2 options, normally), and occasionally your character will retire (allowing you a new class).

If that sounds like a dungeon-crawler, it is because it is. But if that last sentence indicated there is more going on under the hood of this game, it is because there is. Gloomhaven inherets all the flaws of old grid-based dungeon crawlers, with non-inutitive and self-defeating enemy AI, blocking on the grid, and classes falling into archetype roles (along with the old damage-is-king effect). In fact, paradoxically, it is important to remember Gloomhaven is just a dungeon crawl (rather than expecting a revolutionary experience) as well remembering that the dungeon crawl is perhaps the worst part of it.

For example, the way classes are unlocked and your character retires is new. In addition, the combat system tends to revolve around playing two cards and combining them in different ways. Levelling up doesn't so much power up your character as also give you a new card to increase your options. So while your character may be a tank or DPS, you can add some healing cards or support cards, for example, to easily fill spots in your ranks.

There is so much to talk about in this game. Hidden combat objectives, the perk system, the legacy-type elements, etc. However, it is important to note that this is perhaps the most ambitious dungeon-crawler I have played. Other games may give better pure dungeon-crawl experiences, but no other game has quite given me the same overall experience yet.

5 out of 5 gloomy waffles.

BOARD GAME REVIEW: ENDURE THE STARS (2017)

Endure the Stars is the first game out by Grimlord Games. It is a game that has a bit of an identity crisis. By the same token, it is also a game that encompasses the worst aspects of Kickstarter. 

Endure the Stars is a space-themed dungeon-crawl type game. In the game, you and your team are on board a spaces station where something has gone wrong. The corridors are teeming with alien monsters, deadly machines and crazed cultists (depending on which scenario you play). Each scenario gives you some objectives to complete to get through, with multiple scenarios capable of being stringed together as a campaign.

The identity crisis comes because the game doesn't know what it is trying to be. Originally, it looks like it may be a survival horror. It even has some mechanics to support that (resolve checks, noise generation, diceless damage from the monsters). However, it then plays out more like a light dungeon crawler where you get your items and chuck some dice to kill stuff. And it is where these two mechanics merge where the problem lies. There isn't enough mechanics to make searching and then moving out with the best weapons a negative, but so many enemies spawn and move that without doing this or exploiting certain rules, you quickly get overwhelmed.

The worst part of the Kickstarter come with the rules. There is already a 3 page FAQ and 1.1 rulebook out that adds a couple of rules and changed. However, the added rules do not appear to be well tested. Similarly, a lack of playtesting (particularly blind testing) is apparent in how some rules and mechanics did not work. And for a game that was this expensive on kickstarter, it just isn't worthwhile.

You definitely get plenty of component bang for your buck inside the box, with nice tiles and miniatures and a variety of heroes to choose from. With maybe another 3 months of solid development and proper testing, this could've been a real gem. They should also have doubled down on a certain theme and modified the game to suit (i.e. survival horror with stronger but fewer monsters, limited searching and weak items but diceless; or dungeon crawl with no noise mechanic, constant minion spawning and unique starting items for each character and no searching). At the moment, it just feels like a bit mess. Which is a shame because it feels like it is about 80% of the way there, but so many other games in both genres are 100% (Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition; Dungeons and Dragons series of games).

2 out of 5 Enduring Waffles.