Thames & Kosmos - "Adventure Games: The Dungeon"

Photo above is property of Thames & Kosmos

Company: Thames & Kosmos

Game: Adventure Games: The Dungeon

Country: USA 🇺🇸

Language: English

Type of Game: Puzzles By Mail 📬

Genre: Adventure, Medieval

Date Played: January 1, 2022

Difficulty (based on 2 players): 4/10

Size of Team: 1-4 Players (Ages 16+)

Time: 3.5 Hours

Price: $19.95

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Waking up in a cell in a mysterious dungeon with no memory of how you and your friends ended up in this place. It is up to you to figure out the events that lead you to showing up in this dark, vile place. Can you get out in time before whoever put you in this cell comes back to finish you off? What other mysteries lie within this castle?

Video above is property of Thames & Kosmos

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The components in this game are of good quality. There are two decks of cards, four character meeples and two booklets. The simplicity of this game and the minimal materials needed to play lead to a pleasurable experience. The artwork on the cards gave an idea of what was in each room and when each player reveals new rooms there is a description that one can read and reread to get a better idea of what things of note are on the location card.

Photos above are property of Thames & Kosmos

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This is a completely replay-able adventure although most of the game doesn’t change. The basics of the game have players controlling characters and “taking turns” to explore the dungeon. There are two types of cards, location cards and story cards. On the location cards there are three digit numbers that when read from the story booklet will tell you what is in each location. You will get story cards throughout the game as well, all of these cards vary in nature, some are items, others are status depending on what the character has interacted with. The game will tell you when to get these cards.

Working one player at a time, each player can move, investigate or apply items to each location within their turn. By using this set of rules it allows everyone to get a fair shot at participating and making the story their own. Each main character follows a trope and it is up to the group to figure out the best character to go to specific spots on the location cards. When you want to use an item at a location just add the two digit number of the item to the beginning of the three digit location number (ex. If you have item 13 and you want to use it on location 702 you will read entry 13702); likewise, if you want to combine items, take the smaller number followed by the larger number and read that entry (ex. You have item 13 and item 14, combining them has you read entry 1314). Continue with these processes until you reach the end of the story!

In this game, each character will have a certain amount of health points, losing HP doesn’t cause a failure within the game, you will still encounter the whole story, it will just determine how well your team did as a group for the final score.

Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

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The play-through of this game reminds one of a classic point and click adventure that you would see on the computer game. There are no specific puzzles in this game but there are logical deductions that the group will have to make to complete the game. An example they give in the rule book is if you have a can opener and a can, you combine the two items to get an open can of food. We found most of the combinations and actions taken during The Dungeon to be logical and innovative.

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"The Dungeon" is another game in the Adventure Games series from Kosmos. With very similar gameplay to the previous game "Adventure Games: Monochrome, Inc.", it makes playing the game right from the box extremely simple. Working through all three chapters creates a long storyline and a decently long evening. Each chapter took about the recommended time of ninety minutes and they felt evenly spread out. Playing with two players, each player controls one character and swaps back and forth taking turns. The characters, while they do have an arc-type, seemed very unimportant to the story. There are a couple of decisions that ask for a character to lead but the story will continue on without much consequence depending on who you pick. With that information then, you should be able to play this game with all player counts and it will just depend on how many people you want to share the story with. Even though it is replay-able, the story will not be new to returning players. It is best to hand this game off to another group and let them enjoy an evening trying to make their way out of this dungeon. Overall our group had a fun time playing The Dungeon and would recommend anyone looking for an analog game to venture forth and experience the twists and turns of the story.

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Check out our interview with the creators to understand more on the development side of the game:

Video above is property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

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(If you do decide to try this game, give us a shoutout or tag us on social media so we know you heard it from "ESCAPETHEROOMers"!)

Disclosure: We thank Thames & Kosmos for providing us with samples of the game. Although a complimentary experience was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.

#MikeSchnurr #AtHomeGames #PuzzlesByMail #OneOffs #Adventure #Medieval #ThamesandKosmos #USA #AdventureGames