Asmadi Games One Deck Dungeon, For 168 months to 9600 months

Its really hard finding good solo player games like this! Its a dice/card game where you lay door cards face down and pick which to flip "open" featuring a battle or scenario. Each one is a little dice puzzle where you can roll specific numbers of dice for different stat, combine stats to make a different value... And also use the different items or character abilities to help win the encounter.After each scenario you can make decisions such as gaining more dice.... Converting the encounter in to experienc to level up or other options.. What makes it really cool is every card has many possible functions because there's a lot of sliding one card under the other. The efficency is amazing and lets them cram in alot of content.You cycle through the same deck... But every dungeon has its own boss and every floor has added challenges for that specific dungeon that change all encounters.The estimated time cycle is roughly about 30 minutes...there are papers with it to create your character, where you pick a class then choose a speciality...Over the course of 20 plays per character you can check off accomplishments ranging from leveling up, entering a floor, killing a boss... they are tallied up and let you pick bonuses/abilities to start new games with. This lets you take on harder and harder bosses and may inspire more efficent play throughs for the best final character you can make!!Classes depend on which of the two sets you get. Forest of shadow has the most, and most interesting. It would be hard to explain them but I'm very picky and I like most of them...ton of interesting unique mechanics I felt were very solid and often surprisingly thematic.Which speaking of, the two sets can be combined seamlessly... Although a lot of typical players would be happy with just one?... I would recommend forest of Shadow for that purpose. Just because it has the most content including a poison bad status mechanic... If you combine you can have a ton of classes and and more specalizing character options...The encounters can start to feel a little bland if you only have one because you keep cycling through each time ... but if you combine the two decks there's a lot of diversity.Im a huge fan and a lot of people get really fanatically dedicated to this game because it's really awesome youd have to see it played to know why.The compact size in the inexpensive makes it worth a shot.The final catch is i cant imagine playing with another gamer friend. It may be fun for casual multiplayer. Oh, good game for kids as theres a story mode that can be overlaped over play throughs cute fantasy stuff on their website.10/10!*I do recommend getting thin clear plastic card sleeves if you plan on taking it on the go (because you're sliding a lot of cards underneath each other you have to be a lil cautious otherwise.)

It is a fun. I really enjoy the one player option. It is well balanced. It has a reasonable amount of difficulty. It is super easy and quick to setup and take down. Playing a game doesnt take that long. There is a little bit of math strategy. And it's not that expensive considering how games of this nature usally go for.

My box was complete when it arrived, no problems. The game itself is very punishing without being overly complex. Some have called this a "roguelite", and I think that's a good way to approach the game. Plenty of randomness and challenge, without taking a whole evening to learn. Overall, this is basically the card game version of a Dungeons & Dragons type dungeon crawler, with combat and leveling up and boss monsters. Neat.The setup: Pick a character class from a standard array of Dungeons & Dragons types. There's a Cleric, a Paladin, a Wizard, etc. You setup a few other standard cards to represent things like the dungeon you're in, and the effects of your character level. Your characters' ability points are distributed among different stats, which match to colors of several dice in the box. So for instance the Paladin can swing a sword well (3 yellow dice) but isn't very nimble (1 purple die). You then begin a process where you lay out a board of 4 "door" cards and then start kicking down the doors each turn. You can either confront the terror within, or "flee" from it. These two mechanics have lots to balance them out. But you go along taking down the challenges and drawing more door cards until you've explored the level, and then you head to the next.Combat: Each dungeon floor, and then each monster, has certain colors and numbers of dice required to beat it. This is hard to explain in text, but imagine it like this: To kill a goblin, maybe you have to roll at least a 4 on one purple die, and then at least 11 on any combination of yellow dice. If you fail to fill any of those boxes, you suffer certain consequences listed on the boxes you failed to uncover. So there's a lot of complexity in front of you- but it's all incredibly simple to read. There are also black dice which can apply to any challenge. Generally you can always trade 2 other dice down for a black die of the lowest value you're trading in (like a blue 5 and a yellow 2, make a black 2) so you can often use dice for other boxes this way.Wasting time: Aside from potentially suffering consequences if you can't finish the combat in one go, every turn you also throw the top 2 (or more) cards of the draw pile into a discard. When you run out of cards, you're on a timer that kicks you down to the next level of the dungeon- which will be more difficult. You shuffle the discard pile back into the deck, and you turn up a new Dungeon-floor card which increases the requirements to beat the monsters and traps. This is great, and replicates the feeling of some other "roguelite" games like the FTL computer game, where you're battling between trying to gather resources before you run out of time.Leveling up and such: Each challenge you face can be added to your character as loot. This is the most genius part of the box. A challenge will have certain attributes along its left side- maybe one yellow die and one health point. If you beat that challenge, you can put that card beside your character, and visually it looks like you have more of those attributes. The bottom of the card will be a skill or item, and the top-right of the card has experience points. So you get to pick how to divide up your spoils, and have to plan how best to tackle the challenges ahead. You only get to place this card one way- attributes, skills/items, or experience. Again, lots of information all incredibly accessible. Smart design.The roguelite element: The only sort of problem I have with the process is how often you'll start to notice that the boxes on the monsters have a lot of 5s and 6s on them. The game is meant to make you fail, and it ruthlessly punishes any move you ever make that's less than optimal. That can be troublesome because even if you play 100% correctly, you might just get a bad roll of the dice, and that will ruin a whole turn for you- complete with hitting you with damage or more time lost. The mechanic of trading in attribute dice for black dice helps a bit, but often you'll find you have a handful of dice that are all 1-3 and you can't turn that whole handful of dice into the single 5 you need. That can be frustrating. I'm sure someone out there has made a house rule to help this- for instance, if you can make two black dice that are both 3s then you can trade them up to a 4, and so on. That might let you smooth out the random factor a little.Overall: It's a fun game. It's all the fun of Dungeons&Dragons combat, battling monsters in a dungeon and leveling up. It supports 1 or 2 players out of the box, and more with expansions. I can definitely see how this game would suit 3-4 player play better than 1, as more people would help smooth out the random factor even more. And it even supports campaign play, as you can track stats on little character sheets included in the box if you want to carry the same character across multiple campaigns. Neat! One star off due to the frustration level- it won't be for everyone. But some people will love the gambling element, and considering it's very quick-to-play, you can play several games until you finally get a good run.