Note from Video: Kim is my wife and has been playing Dungeons and Dragons since 3rd edition, although I'm not sure she's ever actually read the rule books before. She's been playing board and card games as long as she remembers, and somehow puts up with me on a daily basis.
Since I'm married to Video of Video Gaming at 30, I hear about games for months before we get to play them and in this case months before it was even available for sale. It was a game that we absolutely had to stop by to see at GenCon. When it wasn't available there, I heard about it even more. So, I was really excited about playing this one.
I settled in on the couch with the rules on Saturday about a half hour before our friends were supposed to arrive and found that they were pretty intuitive and a quick read.
There was the typical assortment of characters to choose from. Typically I go for one of the female characters – since I'm a girl, but this time I ended up playing something more similar to what I play when I play D&D – I ended up with the Fighter/Defender dragonborn dude.
As for the gameplay itself, I had fun. We had some close calls where the party almost wiped, but we managed to survive both games we played. The game did a good job of forcing our party to stick together. If you wandered off too far on your own, it wasn't good for your health. We kept forgetting that we could turn in xp to cancel an event. Hell, sometimes the “treasure” was dangerous too.
I liked the tile system for generating monsters. It gave it a sense of danger that when you explored a new tile, you would for sure get a bad guy and maybe get some awful event that would hurt you and possibly your whole party. Although since it was random, sometimes the beginning monsters were more difficult than the bosses.
I really liked that the tiles make the game different each time. That along with the adventure book giving you a different objective each game gives it a kind of House on Haunted Hill feel in my opinion.
Overall, fun game, but give me Apples to Apples any day. It won't be my first pick, but I wouldn't go fall asleep on the couch either.
