Dungeon Drop Review

Dungeon Drop is a dungeon crawler game with a unique way of constructing its play area: dropping it! It's a full-sized adventure of infinite possibilities packed into a cube.

Take yourself (see Solo Spelunker section) and/or a group of fellow explorers on an around twenty-minute quest. Players fight through hoards of dungeon-dwelling monsters to gather the most treasure while avoiding disaster at the polygonal claws of the dragon!

Into The Dungeon

To start the game off, each player gets a series of cards: a Player Aid (a card with information about board pieces and turn format), a Race card, a Class card and a Quest card. The latter three of these can be chosen or given out at random depending on the sort of difficulty players want to experience. For first-time or younger players (this game has an Age Rating of 8+ so is something to play with older children), I recommend giving all the cards a read-through before picking their own Race and Class cards (still giving out the Quests at random as an appropriate challenge). Turn order for the first of the three rounds is decided by initiative order on the Race cards - lowest first - and the turn order markers are handed out accordingly.

With no board to this ‘board game’, players construct a random dungeon over a number of turns by dropping a collection of small cubes onto a table (or similar horizontal surface). This is called the ‘Explore’ phase of a turn. Next, is the ‘Act’ phase where you can choose to use either of your Race or Class abilities - these help change things within the dungeon or how you play during the last phase of the turn: ‘Loot’. Loot is pretty self-explanatory as it's when you get treasure by forming rooms using pieces called ‘pillars’. However, room forming must be done carefully as each Race comes with a limited amount of health, so the monsters you need to fight to get treasure from a room should always be kept in mind.

For more experienced adventurers, the game adds ‘Teamwork’. Players try to predict where their fellow adventurers will explore and gain points if correct. Points come at a risk as wrong guesses result in your meeple becoming lost until another player forms a room around them.

Scoring is done at the end of the game based on Quests, treasure collected and monsters beaten throughout the three rounds.

Solo Spelunker

The number of players for Dungeon Drop is 1 to 4 since the base game comes up with a single-player variant: Solo Spelunker.

It plays mostly like the group game in terms of how turns work, but adds a few new pieces which are the 'staircase' and 'Relic' cubes. The staircase allows the solo explorer to move to different floors of the dungeon - the board is reset on each floor. Relics mark progress; as you collect Relic cubes more points are required to proceed further into the dungeon, meaning that the game gets harder the longer you adventure forth. Each floor also comes with a Quest refresh to make you mix up your strategy.

Although, the difficulty mentioned above is not faced without help. Each time a player collects Relics on a floor and succeeds to the next or beats a Huge monster (e.g. the Dragon), they receive an additional Class card to use once per round along with their initial Race and Class cards.

End-of-game scoring happens when you leave the dungeon and 'retire'. The legacy of adventure your character gains from your quest is based on the number of Relics collected during said quest. So, do you have what it takes to become a legend?

The Stuff Of Legends

I adore games that look as nice as it is to play them and Dungeon Drop delivers on this with a dragon hoard's worth of aesthetic charm. Art by Marília Nascimento and graphic design done in addition with Darrin Horbal, it is obvious that a lot of care was put into how this game looks. All of the character designs are clean and so full of life they could walk across the page and I wouldn't be surprised. The style is cute, and cartoony, which isn't for everyone, but it fits that the game is suitable for older children.

The game’s adaptability is something to admire as well. Rules can be adjusted and cards can be swapped to make the experience more enjoyable for everyone playing without taking the challenge away from those that want it.

Aside from the tangible reasons to like this game, Dungeon Drop is cosy. It's the perfect way to spend a quiet evening alone with a few snacks and a movie playing in the background. It’s an afternoon game to take home to play with the family while catching up after months of not seeing one another. Sure, some people prefer games where players are constantly talking about things happening in the game, but it’s nice to have a game where that doesn’t need to happen for the session to function.

A Mess In The Making

Its replayability is quite high because of the unique dungeon guaranteed in almost every game. The game’s slogan being ‘Instant Dungeon… Infinite Possibilities!’ makes a lot of sense.

However, the small size of the pieces + the game’s dropping mechanic = straying pieces. If you’re going to play Dungeon Drop without any way to catch stray cubes then expect them to bounce away quicker than you can catch them sometimes. This can be managed with gentler drops or playing with a walled tray or on the floor (I play on my living room carpet).

Also, if you're planning to play this game on anything harder than a foam mat or fabric then expect chipping. Most of the printed-on and painted wooden blocks can take a bit of knocking before anything is damaged - the metallic cubes are another story. The golden, metallic cubes start to lose their corners quicker than the others which is something I can reluctantly live with.

Final Thoughts

I’d recommend this game to anyone who is looking for a game to play with people who have a variety of tastes.

Dungeon Drop and its simple gameplay allows newer gamers to flourish while offering seasoned board game fans a different experience from most dungeon crawler games. Its interactivity will be able to keep younger players' attention. Even those that don't like fantasy have something to enjoy with races like 'Gear Golem' (it's a little robot).