Thoughts on Secrets of the Lost Tomb?

Considering the 10 year anniversary edition launching soon ( gamefound.com/en/projects/cbatarlis/secretsofthelosttomb ), I thought I'd see what people think about this game. I have never played it, and remember people saying it had its charms but was a bit janky. At the time it came out it was fairly easy for me to ignore it, but I'm thinking now that it might be exactly the kind of game I want.

There will be a core box, as well as an all-in that comes with what appears to be a shit ton of expansions. Does anyone have any thoughts on the expansions? I am mainly interested in expansions that add variety without a bunch of new rules / mechanics.

I like that each game is a one-off. I don't need another goddamn campaign game in my life.

Do any of the scenarios change it to competitive?

I'm eyeing it, but the main issue for me is that this company has so many issues putting out janky products full of errata.

I really liked the Big Trouble in Little China game, however.

My friend bought Rambo and that was full of bugs and jank. So normally I'd be steering clear as well. My possible confidence here comes from the fact that they have had 10 years with this game to polish it.

I recently sold my copy of BTiLC but enjoyed the times I played it for the most part. It did feel a little too much like the heroes needed to be on meth to level up as fast as possible because the first board time flies by too fast IMO. You didn’t really have time to explore much. That said the game was well produced and very well done thematically speaking .

Echoing Msample here: I liked Big Trouble because they did a great job of translating the feel of the film to the game. But the setup time was often atrocious with all of the quests to sort through and whatnot. And, as he said, the disparity between Act 1 and Act 2 in terms of pacing was pretty bad. If we made it to Act 2, it was either a situation where we were going to get slaughtered or we steamrolled the place. There was no in-between, which made it seem like most of the game rode on luck, without much strategy in picking those quests that took so much time to begin with. I ended up thinking that it just wasn't worth the effort and traded it. Excellent minis, though.

On topic: I played Secrets once many years ago, so I don't have much to add. The KS for Big Trouble did take significantly longer than expected, though, FWIW.

I owned and played it, sold it about 5 years ago due to having too many games. I really liked it:
- all the scenarios are one-shots and the new edition is doubling the number (14 I think),
- the characters are fun and diverse,
- the gear and artifacts are great,
- gameplay (from memory) is pretty good (we thought it was actually a bit too hard and modified the re-roll rule slightly),
- it uses the Betrayal at House on the Hill random tiles mechanic for building the dungeon so if you like that (I do) it is done well, the tiles also have different icons which trigger searches or traps or scenario check-points,
- adventure/event cards like Arkham Horror (and many other games) that can be good or bad depending on how the room trigers them,
- used standees instead of minis (they looked good).
- the characters have an interesting skills progression that is based on courage/fear , more courage more skills and more fear less skills. Too much fear and your character is forced to run back screaming in terror towards the dungeon entrance for their turn.

Bad Things: can't remember too much but from my game reports the re-roll rule was a bit tough (that's just our subjective view), few places to spend the soul shards you collect from defeating enemies, some of the scenarios may have been a bit unbalanced.
But they have already said a lot of tweaks on the original will be implemented.

The expansions (I never owned any so going on what I read) offers different scenarios linked by a different theme and usually provide more tiles for them. I reckon unless this is going to be a lifestyle game for you the 14 scenarios in the new core will be enough for most people.

If you like co-op dungeon crawl adventure games with set scenarios, interesting character development, and the other mechanics I mentioned then it is worth getting. It will likely play 3-4 hours for 4 players unless you get a good run with gear and character development, although we talk a lot rather than just race through a game.

hotseatgames wrote: My friend bought Rambo and that was full of bugs and jank. So normally I'd be steering clear as well. My possible confidence here comes from the fact that they have had 10 years with this game to polish it.

I'm eyeballing a different game (that I love) going through re-release pre-pub where the guy in charge of it is having trouble writing complete sentences let alone writing a clear rule. I am very concerned this new version will be . . . not-good. Sometimes the best thing you can do is just leave something alone.