Dinky Dungeon is a small take-that card game.

Title: Dinky Dungeon

Year Published: 2023

Designer: Shun Taguchi, Aya Taguchi

Publisher: Jelly Jelly Games

Players: 2-4

Game Time: 15 Minutes

Set-up Time: ~1 minute

Ages: 10+

Theme: Delving into a cartoon dungeon.

Mechanisms: Set Collection, Take That

How to win: Gain the number of reward cards according to the player count by raiding dungeons and stealing from other players.

Game Description

You are an adventurer who came to this island under the king’s orders. Unfortunately, you are a pretty lame adventurer. While in a tavern and having a hard time finding the courage to enter the dungeon, you come up with a good idea. “Let’s hire other adventurers to go in my place !”

How to play Dinky Dungeon

Learn how to play Dinky Dungeon in a quick and consice video!

Main Mechanisms

There is a touch of hand management as you have two cards in hand and have to decide which to play. But it barely counts. As does set collection because you’re just collecting big numbers rather than sets.

But this is definately a take that game, stealing and discarding rewards from opponents.

USP

Nothing really uniqye here, light take-that dungeon game have been done before.

Theme

Cartoony dungeon delving. I’m not sure why it’s so competitive.

Setup & Rulebook

Setup is just shuffling two decks of cards.

The rulebook is good for the top level, not for the detail and rare situations that may crop up.

Components & Artwork

Standard cards with nice and clear iconography. In fact, both types of cards have a tonne of uneeded and pointless iconography. Some of the text is small and the red text (with an orange background) on the Scapegoat is near impossible to read in low light.

I do like the cartoony art on the cards.

Ease of Teaching

The game is easy to teach. The only hidden information is that first card a player draws on a turn. Almost all of the cards are straight forward so there shouln’t be an issue.

Similar Games

I picked it up due to it’s similaraity to one of my favourite games, Love Letter, minus the player elimination.

Dinky Dungeon Review

Positives

Fun and quick gameplay.

The range of characters is great with a bunch of non-standard classes.

It’s cheap and in a tiny little box.

Negatives

It’s too take-that for me.

Odd number turns hurt the game end.

Dinky Dungeon Round-Up

A very fun and light take-that game that will have you want to figuratuvely kill your opponents!

Rating

I give it 6/10