Arkeis is a cooperative, dungeon-crawl campaign game.

Title: Arkeis

Year Published: 2023

Designer: Antoine Bauza, Corentin Lebrat, Ludovic Maublanc, Théo Rivière

Publisher: Ankama

Players: 1-5

Game Time: ~60 minutes per scenario

Set-up Time: ~5 minutes per scenario

Ages: 10+

Theme: Steampunk Egypt, early 1900’s for a guess.

Mechanisms: Cooperative, Modular Board, Campaign, Variable Player Powers.

How to win: Complete the campaign and hope you earned a positive outcome!

Game Description

History is full of secrets…

As they explore an ancient Egyptian tomb, a team of archaeologists and adventurers stumble upon a mystery that History forgot. To uncover the truth, they will have to delve deeper and deeper in the pyramids, dodging deadly traps and fighting back swathes of monsters running after them. Has the old Pharaoh placed a curse on this expedition? Should some secrets remain untold? This story is now yours to complete…

How to play Arkeis (Spoiler Free)

This is how to play Arkeis. It’s a greatly edited-down solo play using the introduction campaign to learn the game. Let me know what you think of this video, I’ve never done one like this before.

Main Mechanisms

That cooperative and campaign element sums up the game perfectly really.

The rest of the mechanisms are general ones used to play the game and feel lesser by comparison.

The game is mentioned as a ‘Legacy’ game on BGG. You only affect two components which are replaceable from a recharge pack.

USP

Nothing really. There are plenty of dungeon crawlers and games where you put stickers on things, it’s not even unique to be both of them together.

Theme

I like the digging in Eqypt in the early 1900s and I like that some of the adversaries are mechanical, that’s cool.

Setup & Rulebook

The setup is OK but obviously, you have to do it for each scenario even if playing a few in a row. This wouldn’t be too bad with friends but solo it’s a chore.

The rulebook Is bad. It doesn’t teach the game it throws rules at you, incomplete rules. You learn the game by playing the first scenario which is good, but I still want a complete rulebook. As I play I am unsure about quite a few things.

Components & Artwork

The components… So I backed this on Kickstarter and it arrived two and a half years late, mostly Covid related. When they were arriving people were complaining about damage to the box, that the box was thin and the card stock even thinner.

So when I got mine, I was relieved that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. Yes, the box is thin and the card stock is very thin but it’s not awful. I have already bent one token that slots into the top of the doors though.

The minis are nice and the artwork has a nice style.

Ease of Teaching

There are 4 actions, all very straightforward. It’s co-op and open information so should be easy to teach.

I’m playing the campaign solo so I don’t have to teach it. (Although it wasn’t that easy to teach myself)

Similar Games

I’m going to look at this as I’m playing it which is a solo adventure game. So, in my collection, I’d put Destinies and ISS Vanguard as similar games for now. This is 3rd place if I were to rank them.

Arkeis Summary

So this is a fairly simple game. There are four actions and you can take two actions on a turn. Three of them, Move, Support and Search are very straightforward.

The final one, Attack is a bit more complex. Well, attacking is easy, roll the dice and follow the results. But what the adversaries do on your turn isn’t that straightforward. There is a lot of vagueness due to the amount of components and incompleteness of the rulebook.

I just wish they’d made a proper rulebook so I could learn the game before playing.

The grind of ‘getting through’ the scenarios I a bit of a chore. I’m not enjoying going back, I’m forcing myself to play at least the base game campaign.

Round-Up

I look forward to seeing how it ends, but I don’t think I’ll play the expansions.

Rating

I give it 6/10