A Game Unto Itself: Tiny Epic Dungeons Review

There are a number of games that "feel" like other...

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This is a damn good review. Well done. Again.
I doubt I'll play it, but I sure did enjoy reading about it!

Thanks! Once again, I was wondering if I went into too much detail, but there's A LOT of detail to cover in this one, so it felt kind of compelling. I was kind of surprised at how good this one turned out to be, even for me the constant basher of both co-ops and solos, but it works really well in both modes. If you were to get a chance to play it, I wouldn't pass it up.

How do you think this would work with (board game experienced) kids? I'm not worried about the rules since I could quarterback it, and it seems like it's pretty easy to understand the basics of what you can do in a given turn (I want to go there to explore or I want to off that gobbo). But I am a bit worried about the difficulty. Not because the game can't be hard when playing with kids, I'm just wondering if the tight action economy means you won't have a chance to win unless you make tight tactical decisions. Is that true in your experience or can you play it a bit more loose and still have fun and/or a small chance to win?

That's a great question. I think there's still room within the system to wander off and find new stuff, as long as there's a sense of teamwork within the group that if this turn one person is going to do that, other people are going to maintain the goblins or do what's necessary to CYA. That doesn't necessarily mean just beating up on goblins, either, as it might mean stopping and disarming a trap so that others have a route to easily retreat through, rather than taking the risk of trying to beat said trap and getting wounded and so on. Especially if you have the right combination of characters, I think there's still space within the design to do that kind of poking around or stopping in one of the Search action rooms to grab some loot off the discard row or other things that don't directly contribute to the win that turn, as it were. I would say that there's probably a more limited ability to do that than with other dungeon crawlers, just because that action economy is so tight, but I think it's still viable.

This is a great review.

It reminds me of my experience in my changing assessment of Arkham LCG. It looks like a wacky romp but it's actually a game of brutal, almost euro style, action efficiency. Sounds like this has that same vibe for the dungeoncrawler and it throws people.

Thanks! I think that assessment is spot on. In a number of the TE games, there's a mechanical depth that I think often throws people who are expecting something simple because of how small they are. That's rarely the case. My favorite example in that respect is Tiny Epic Mechs, since most were expecting a bash'em up robots game and, instead, you have a pretty calculated assessment of just how you're going to maximize your points in the scoring round and building up to each of those situations in the non-scoring rounds. Most people (like Tom Vasel, just to drop one name) were thinking that it was just going to be a "Pick up huge-ass gun and win!" kind of thing.

Dungeons is the same way in that careful planning is always going to be superior to just running into the next room and chucking dice. That's not dissimilar from things like Descent 1st Ed, which was notorious for how quickly the Overlord could take over the game and just wreck the heroes if they weren't careful, but it's more of an element than I think many people were expecting, in addition to simply assuming that TED functioned like most other dungeon crawlers that they'd played before.

Very good review thank you for sharing