Rumble in the Dungeon: A Review of Dungeon Roll

As a powerful Enchantress, musical Bard, or fearless Dragon Slayer, explore a deadly dungeon and push your party to their limits in order to become the mightiest hero in all the land.

Gameplay

Over the course of the game, each player has three chances to explore the dungeon and attempt to gain the most experience points. At the start of your turn, you roll seven party dice. These show the different heroes that you have in your party. You then begin to explore the dungeon, starting on level one.

The player on your left always rolls the dungeon dice for you. These show what types of monsters are on your level of the dungeon. The number of dungeon dice rolled equals the level of the dungeon you are on.

Different heroes are better at fighting different monsters. A cleric for example is good against skeletons, while a fighter is better with goblins. One hero die can be used to defeat any number of the monsters they are strongest against, or one monster of any other type.

Dungeon dice can also fill the dungeon with treasure chests (which give you loot that can help you in future battles or be turned in for experience points at the end of the game), magic potions (which you can drink to bring back one of your spent party dice), or dragons. Each time a dragon is rolled, it is set aside. After three are set aside, you must battle the dragon and spend three dice to defeat it.

After clearing out each level of the dungeon, you choose if you wish to delve deeper or return to town. If you return to town, you earn experience equal to the number of levels you cleared. If you continue on your quest, you risk not having the right party dice to defeat the monsters on the next level and will be forced to flee, earning no experience.

Review

Tasty Minstrel Games did a wonderful job with the components for Dungeon Roll. The dice are beautiful and have a heft to them that make them deeply satisfying to roll. They easily are the star of the show! The artwork is also stunning, and the box itself is a lot of fun. But as you reach in often to pull out treasure or experience points, you want to be a little careful not to be too hard on the lid as it seems the most likely part to break.

Each player is dealt their own character card at the start of the game, each of which has a unique power and each of which can be leveled up for an even better ability. These characters vastly increase replay value, as the powers really do change the ways you approach the dungeon and alter your tactics.

The fact that treasure can either be used to help advance through the dungeon or saved to score at the end of the game, adds a new dimension to the press-your-luck elements already in play. We also liked that the treasure featured a ‘portal to town’ scroll that reminded us of some of our favorite RPGs. In fact, the dungeon crawling theme was executed extremely well in this game, and we enjoyed the increasing stakes and danger as we ventured further into the dungeon.

Managing your party dice is a fun challenge, for instance when you are faced with a treasure chest and must choose whether to spend one die on opening it or saving all your heroes for the next level of the dungeon. We loved the choices the game presented us with.

Turns can be a little long and in a four player game the downtime becomes too much, especially since the player interaction is fairly superfluous (it doesn’t really matter whether you roll your own dungeon dice or someone does it for you). But this is a perfect press-your-luck game for two or three players.

In the end, we had a lot of fun with this game, and if you’re looking for a unique dice game with a great theme, you can’t go wrong with Dungeon Roll.

Pros: Beautiful components, fun press-your-luck gameplay, great use of theme

Cons: Little player interaction, too much downtime in a four player game

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.