On Sunday I played my first game of 5 Minute Dungeon. It is a cooperative game themed around a bunch of adventurers beating through a dungeon full of monsters to try to crush the final boss. Each player has a class and this gives them a basic power and a deck of cards. The powers are pretty meh most of the time but the decks have enough different and interesting mechanics that the classes really do feel different.
The basic way it plays is you have a few cards in your hand, most of which will be resources like shields, swords, arrows, speed, or magic. An encounter will flip over and will do something or require resources to beat - usually three of them. For example, an encounter might require two shields and an arrow to defeat. When people play those resources to beat the encounter they draw more cards to get back up to maximum hand size and the next encounter comes up.
So far, so boring.
But, the game has a wrinkle that turns it from complete snoozefest with a massive alpha player problem into a fun, fast ride. You only have 5 minutes to play it. You cannot sit there and strategize over who will play the arrow because you have 30 - 60 encounters to do in 300 seconds. Five seconds to see what an encounter has in store, check your hand, and slam down resources is tough. When you play a resource it is lost forever, even if it is overkill, so you will inevitably play things at the same time as someone else and be wasteful. It is especially tough because you don't know what your friends have. Do they have a 'beat a monster' card? If so, you really don't want to slam some resources down and waste them if the monster is getting beat automatically. But if you hesitate, you fritter away precious seconds.
You all have to yell and slam cards and strategize and flip over new cards as fast as possible and it is tremendous fun. No one can be the alpha player because you literally cannot read everyone's cards as fast as they draw them. Every person must play their own game the best they can.
Having a game in 5 minute chunks is really great. If someone new shows up they only have to wait 5 minutes at most for it to be over, and another 5 minutes to shuffle the cards up again. You never have to worry about going too long, or leaving people out. Want a bathroom break? Just skip a round!
The game also has a variety of difficulty levels. The Baby Barbarian is pretty easy, and the Dungeon Master (Final Form) is absolutely brutal. But if you want to play with kids you absolutely can - just increase the timer, or decrease the number of encounters, or whatever. It is a coop game with multiple dials to change the challenge so you can play it with any group at all.
5 Minute Dungeon can never inspire strategy discussions or lots of thinking. However, it can and does offer an entertaining, engaging, and easy to learn coop experience, and it has all the great logistical benefits of being a quick game while retaining replay value.
The game is out, but the latest expansion is up on Kickstarter, and I think pretty much every gamer would be happy to have this game on their shelf. As part of the KS you can get the base game included too.
it felt more like speed than anything. Still it was a fun afterrnoon when the campaign we started was endings.
ReplyDeleteI played this two weeks ago! It seemed like a fun solo game. :-)
ReplyDeleteEmily liked it. We certainly weren't playing optimally (two other kids and one other dad were playing) but it was enjoyable. Not sure I want to own it though. I don't see me and three friends spending an afternoon trying to maximize our times. Though it definitely helps on big game days when we need short games.