Dungeon Lords is the newest game by Czech game designer Vlaada Chvátil. I'm already a fan of his earlier games, especially Galaxy Truckers and Space Alert, so when I saw that he had a new game coming out about making a dungeon and staffing it with imps to work it and monsters to fight off invading heroes, the part of me that so fondly remembers Dungeon Keeper got very excited.
So, of course, the actual publication of the game got delayed.
But I did finally get ahold of it, and tricked a couple of friends into learning it with me, and we had a go of it.
First off, this game is adorable. The artwork calls back to the creatures of Dungeon Keeper, but made humorous and adorable. Just check out that imp over there. The little plastic imp figures are just as adorable. All of the game boards (and there are quite a few, but each one serves a purpose and space is saved wherever they can manage) have little details on them, like a baby imp hugging his slime BFF. Heartwarming. Vlaada Chvátil tends to write rulebooks that range from humorous to hilarious, and Dungeon Lord's book tends toward the latter, especially the flavor commentary provided by a minion and a demon. My one complaint is that the wooden minion figures have an unfortunate silhouette. I think they kind of look like the E.T. sprite from the terrible Atari 2600 game. My roommate thinks they look like dinosaurs with priapism. We can't decide which is worse. Some stickers with the minion picture on them would fix that problem right up.Second off, the game has a definite learning process. You can't really just jump into a game and learn as you go. I'll get to that in more detail in a second, but it's something to keep in mind. It's not really a complicated game, mind you. There are far fewer rules to remember than in, say, a Fantasy Flight Games game. But you also can't just pick it up and play. Don't worry, though, the pregame lessons don't take very long.
To borrow the summary from the rules, the game goes as follows: Build, fight, build, fight, score. That's it. In the build phase, you send out your minions to do your bidding, gathering resources and spending them on tunnels, dungeon rooms, and monsters. In the fight phase, heroes try to wreck your dungeon and you try to hold them back. After two game-years of building and fighting, you total up scores and see who won.
This is why you can't just jump straight in, by the way. Even though building is the first phase of the game, you need to understand how the fighting phase works, otherwise you'll just be playing blind.
Anyway, on to the mechanics. Dungeon Lords borrows from a lot of other games, but it neatly avoids being a ripoff. The build phase is divided into four production seasons, a little like Kingsburg, with some maintanence steps mixed it. During production, players can send their minions to do three different jobs. The available jobs are gaining food, spreading propaganda, digging tunnels, mining gold, hiring new imps, buying traps, hiring a monster, or building a room.
Dungeon Lords takes a rather nasty twist on the standard worker placement mechanic that you see in games like Caylus or Kingsburg. Each player decides where and in what order to send his three minions secretly and simultaneously, then everyone's orders are revealed and the minions are placed going around the table. The first minion to arrive at a space gets the least benefit, so you might try to send a minion to an important task late. On the other hand, only three minions can go to a particular job space, and there are four players. (If there are fewer than four players, a dummy fourth is included just to block random spaces.) So if that space is in high demand and you send your minion too late, he might end up blocked out of the space entirely!
The other twist in the build phase is that you are blocked from taking two of the actions during each season. Each season, two of the three action cards you played are taken out of your hand for a round, and can't be chosen next season. You can see what the other players are blocked from, as well, so you have some clues as to what your opponents will be able to do.
Between the production seasons, you'll be able to see what adventurers will be attacking at the end of the year. The evillest dungeon lord gets the strongest adventurers. But the adventurers come in four types: meat-shield warriors, trap preventing rogues, damage healing priests, and spellcasting wizards. If you have a plan for the battle phase, you might want to arrange to be more or less evil when the heroes are handed out, so that you get one your defenses can handle. If a dungeon lord gets too evil, he attracts the attention of the paladin, who is a huge pain to defeat, but is worth a bunch of points if you can manage it.
The fight rounds play out like a kind of puzzle minigame. In each of four combat rounds, the adventurers attempt to conquer a tunnel or room in your dungeon. You can send a trap and/or a monster to attack them. If you do enough damage to an adventurer, he goes into your prison and is worth points. If any adventurers survive, they conquer the tile, which makes you lose the use of that tile and is also negative points. Usually, traps and monsters can only be used once, so the puzzle is working out how to most efficiently use your defences so that you protect as many tiles as possible. The special abilities of your traps, monsters, and of the heroes can interact in strange and hard to predict ways.
After two game years of building and fighting, the game is done, and you count up the score. There's lots of different ways to get points, so it's hard to point at any particular thing and say "this is what you're trying to do." Compare to, say, Galaxy Truckers, where the winner is whoever earns the most money. In Dungeon Lords, the dungeon that's worth the most points is the best dungeon. What makes it the best? The fact that it's worth the most points, of course! It's not completely satisfying, but really it works out fine. I certainly can't think of a better alternative off the top of my head.
In your first game, you'll probably just care about keeping your dungeon intact. After a few games, you'll be watching for the moves that will earn you bonus points. I've got two full games under my belt now, which isn't enough for me to have a firm grasp on a winning strategy, but at this point when I lose it's entirely my own fault.
Some final thoughts: At first glance, having only two game years seems like it's too short. One of my gaming group thought that the game could easily go a third year, maybe with an expansion. You certainly don't have enough time to feel like you've "finished" your dungeon. Thinking back on it, though, I think that two years is just about right. Because the time is short, you never get to a point where you feel like you have nothing left to do and are just wasting time. Ending the game where it is leaves you wanting more, which is greatly preferable to wishing you had those last 30 minutes of your life back.
Final verdict? Well, I'd been drooling over the game for months and I, personally, am not disappointed by it in the least. This isn't a gateway game, sure, but if you've got a group of three or four experienced gamers, this is a welcome addition to your gaming repertoire.
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