• Game Title: Dungeon Roll
• Release Date: 2013
• Number of Players: 1-4
• Average Game Time: 15-30 minutes
• Game Publisher: Edge Entertainment
• Website:  boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/138778/dungron-roll
• Game Designer: Chris Darden
• Expansions/Alternates: Yes
• Available in Stores: Yes

Dice games seem to be rarer to me than the other types of games out there, so whenever I find a game focused around dice rolling I always go out of my way to give it a try. My friend pulled out his copy of Dungeon Roll last weekend and I was immediately intrigued. The game is based on the classic Dungeons and Dragons story; a mysterious stranger goes into a tavern and recruits a party of adventurers to complete a task for him. These adventurers journey out into the world and fight monsters, gather treasure, and gain experience as they move toward their goal. This theme is then simplified from an all-encompassing and complex tabletop game to a straightforward dice-rolling mechanic where the goal of the game is to get the most experience of the group after three rounds of play.

To start off the game, each player is given a Hero card that has both a passive and an active ability (passive can be used any time, active can only be used once per round). These abilities can be used each round to help defeat monsters, change dice rolls, and any other number of abilities to help you succeed in the game. Each Hero card has two sides, one regular and one upgraded. If you are able to get at least 5 experience points in one round, you are able to flip your Hero card over to the upgraded side and gain even stronger abilities. Once each player has a Hero card, the player who starts first rolls the white party dice to assemble his/her “party”. This party can consist of up to 6 different options, including five different classes (Champion, Wizard, Fighter, Rogue, and Cleric) and also a scroll dice which allows you to reroll any dice once. Once the party has been assembled, the player to the left of the one who rolled the party acts as the Dungeon Lord. The Dungeon Lord is in charge of rolling enemies for the party to fight.

There are four different monsters (goblin, skeleton, slime, and dragon) and there are also treasures and potions that you can pick up after the monsters are destroyed. In order to destroy any goblins, skeletons, and slime, you have to sacrifice party members by removing the dice from your party. If a dragon is rolled, it is taken out of play until there are 3 dragon dice total. Once the third dragon is rolled, the party has to fight the dragon, which can only be defeated by sacrificing three different class dice. Once you defeat a dragon, you can an extra experience and can grab a treasure chip from the treasure chest.
The more enemies that a party defeats, the more experience points the party gets and subsequently the more dice the Dungeon Master rolls. The player’s turn ends either when they decide to leave the dungeon, or they run out of dice cannot defeat all of the monsters, which causes the party to fail that round. If the party left the dungeon, the player keeps all of the experience earned up to that point. If the party dies, the player doesn’t get any experience from that round. Once three rounds of the game are finished, experience points are calculated and the person with the most points wins.

The game is certainly engaging and I had a lot of fun when I played with my friends. There is a lot of luck involved, but there are also important decisions about how you use your dice and your treasures that need to be taken into account. It took some time figuring out the best strategy for conserving versus using dice, but once you get the hang of it the game moves fairly quickly. The Hero card abilities also add an important layer of strategy, especially the active ability you can only use once per round. The game works better with a smaller amount of people, because with four people there are always two players that aren’t doing anything while the party and the Dungeon Master complete the turn. Apparently the game can also be completed with one player, but without other players to compare scores to I feel like this isn’t as exciting as with 2-3 people.

Jack’s Rating: 4/5 stars