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Tiny tales on tiny sails…
Dark Tomb: Bloodthorn Island is the second game in the series of tiny dungeon crawlers designed by Andy Bergmann of Kozz Games and manages to achieve the crazy task of fitting a 1-5 player, combat driven game, into a format small enough to fit into your pocket.
Like the previous game in the series (Dark Tomb: Crypts of Aurelian) your adventure unfolds as you traverse through three scenarios with your heroic party. This time, you set sail to the titular Bloodthorn Island to try and defeat the evil land serpent Lorgon and utilise a tiny (and adorable) boat to ferry your adventuring party down the treacherous shadow river. Each scenario increases in difficulty, bringing with it new monsters to defeat and the utilisation of the boat creates an interesting balancing act of tactics and manoeuvrability. Despite the scale of adventure before you Dark Tomb: Bloodthorn Island is incredibly quick and easy to setup so it doesn’t take long before you can dive into a new adventure.
Setup is still incredibly quick and easy…
I commented in my Dark Tomb: The Crypts of Aurelian review that the portability achieved by this series of games is incredible considering the sheer amount of components they manage to fit into a 11cm x 8cm box and Dark Tomb: Bloodthorn Island is no different here. Somehow, alongside the D20 for making those crucial attack roles and 82 other components between cards and various tokens, Dark Tomb: Bloodthorn Island manages to squeeze in a tiny boat for your characters to sail on as well!
This makes the game incredibly easy to get to the table despite some minor clunkiness with the small tokens. Each scenario has a set of colour coded cards with iconography dictating all the loot, monsters, and stage tiles you need to setup the scenario ahead of you. There’s also an element of randomness each time you play, as the scenario cards are shuffled and their grid pattern means they can be placed in 4 different directions (with one scenario exception), so your layout shifts each time, as does loot and monsters which are also shuffled to add variety to each voyage.
Final Thoughts…
Dark Tomb: Bloodthorn Island had a hard challenge ahead of it. It had to expand on the formula created by its predecessor whilst maintaining the compact size it was known for and it’s hard not to argue the overall result was a success. The main campaign has a fun new wrinkle with the boat and despite adding more in the box remained the same size meaning it can be tabled pretty much anywhere.
As I have mentioned in my previous review, limitations from the original still exist here and as stated previously, some double-sided hero cards would go a long way to increase versatility and re-playability. If coming to this review having already purchased Dark Tomb: Crypts of Aurelian, being able to mix and match characters does help to a degree but for those who may have just the one, it can sometimes feel lacking. The tokens used for characters and monsters can be fiddly to setup initially and whilst they are different in colour (with icons depicting Hero and Monster types), it would have been nice to see more unique looking tokens for the Heroes. However, these gripes are easily forgiven when you step back and look at what has been achieved in such a small form factor.
Like it’s predecessor this game is not designed to be 100-hour campaign driven epic. It’s a highly portable game designed for when travelling or visiting friends where you can quickly setup and play 15-40 minutes battling various monsters. The big question is, does Dark Tomb: Bloodthorn Island stand on its own and work as a worthy sequel to Dark Tomb: Crypts of Aurelian? I’d say yes! The game scratches the itch when you want a quick adventure with your friends and manages to achieve it in a small scale and have some replay value. It’s also designed in a way that enjoyers of the previous game can mix and match their characters and monsters to create their own adventures or all mash them all together into one grand adventure.
If you had to pick one or the other? For the price they can be had the answer is easy, get both and you’ll still have reams of space on your board gaming shelves.
Fight and Roll…
Combat in Dark Tomb: Bloodthorn Island works exactly the same as it predecessor, with each of your characters utilising a small selection of actions during their turn by placing a token over the skill they wish to use. Once the skill has been chosen, you can’t use it again until the token has been moved off onto another. This method of skill usage encourages players to think more strategically, as whichever skill you pick in the moment, would essentially be on a cooldown the following turn.
Once you have planned out your course of action and selected your ability of choice, it’s dice rolling time! A roll of the singular D20 holds your fate as to whether your attack hits, or cleaves thin air based on comparing your dice result against the defence score on the monster card before you. If you haven’t valiantly defeated the beast before you…then that same D20 is rolled against your defence score and the fight continues.
More characters to choose from but with the same limitations…
Dark Tomb: Bloodthorn Island has four characters for you and your party to play as, all falling within your traditional fantasy archetypes, from Zann the nimble Archer who can curve an arrow around a corner, to Von Klay who uses his trusty Raven to attack enemies and retrieve items on the map. Each character comes with 3 cards detailing their core stats with a thematic portrait illustration, alongside their core skills. Whilst there are some more utility skills (like Von Klay’s use of his Raven) you can still feel the limitations making everything fit into a tiny box has on the overall experience. Once you have taken a few turns you have pretty much seen everything a character can do, you won’t be levelling up or taking items with you either, as in each scenario items act more like a single use boost to your combat rather than a permanent addition, and don’t persist beyond the scenario you’ve played.
A single dice roll to determine combat outcomes does mean luck plays a significant part as well. However, each of your characters skills typically adds a modifier to your roll (which feels more evenly spread out this time around than in the previous game) which can add to the outcome. This can still lead to situations where a few bad dice rolls can write off your party as healing is sparse, with only one character able to heal one HP, one time per scenario…If they get the dice roll. However, the spirit of Dark Tomb: Bloodthorn Island is that it’s quick, fun, and easy to get up and running again, so it certainly manages to scratch the “just one more game” itch even when you’ve just come off the back of a few bad dice rolls.
However, for those who have Dark Tomb: Crypts of Aurelian in their collections, you can swap out characters from either game or play from one directly into the other to make an even bigger campaign. This goes a long way towards helping combat the character fatigue as you can swap out characters between scenarios with access to 8 different characters versus the games original 4. It also gives you the chance to see how different character abilities play off against each other which adds an extra layer of variety for those who want to expand on the experience.