Dungeon Twister First Impressions
Dungeon Twister has you running through an ever-changing dungeon to escape from it.
Also, leaving a few opponents dead along the way will help!
Two teams of adventurers with various powers are trapped in a dungeon. The dungeon is composed of 8 rooms that can be moved and rotated by the players.
Dungeon Twister Game Overview
Quick Rules Summary
Players have identical teams of adventurers and an identical set of cards and equipment tokens.
They seed the board with these adventurers and tokens and play can begin. Players have cards worth 2-5 action points and will play one each turn until all are played, then they are returned to hand.
These action points can be used to move, jump, activate special powers, reveal an adjacent dungeon tile or activate a switch that will rotate the tile they are on. It can also be used to rotate the matching number tile elsewhere in the dungeon if that tile is revealed.
If adjacent to an opponent, they can attack using the adventurer’s strength plus a card played from hand numbered zero to six. If the attacker is higher they wound the defender.
How do you win?
Getting an adventurer out of the dungeon on the opponent’s side of the board is worth a point. Attacking a wounded adventurer takes them off the board and is worth a point. The first to 5 points wins.
Main Mechanisms
Action point allowance is the main one. You have to determine what you need to use this turn and try and take as few actions as possible to save the high-value action point cards for later turns.
USP
This game was released in 2004 so I’m sure that a lot of this was new at the time, especially being able to manipulate the board this much.
Theme
I’m not sure if there is any lore or backstory as to why these adventurers are in this dungeon.
Setup
Place the dungeon tiles face down then take turns adding face-down tokens to the board. When a tile is flipped face up those tokens are then added to that tile by the players.
Components & Artwork
It’s a 20-year-old game at this point and it shows. For example, the information on the back of the screen that shows the character and item abilities is very wordy. A few bullet points would have made this easier to read and remember.
Ease of Teaching
The game is very easy to teach. Almost everything you need to know is printed on the shield or the cards. It’s all open information too as each player has the same hand of cards.
Similar Games
While playing it actually gave me flashbacks to when I used to play Dungeonbowl all day with my friends way back when.
Back in the present, manoeuvring through a changing environment gave me Room 25 feelings.
Dungeon Twister Review
Positives
It’s very tight and tactical.
The balance of running for the exit and holding back to stop your opponents from escaping is a tough choice.
The different abilities of the characters give each one a personality. The Wall-Walker can walk through walls and the Thief can open gates for example.
Expansions can make this up to 4 players with asynchronous adventurers which sounds cool.
Negatives
It’s ageing a bit.
There is a fair bit of AP for such as small game.
Summary
A decent game that I found really difficult to get my head around to play well.
Jesta ThaRogue
