Arguably one of the most popular genres in the world of tabletop has to be dungeon crawlers, with massively popular titles like Gloomhaven leading the charge, providing epic, multi-layered, complex and long-running campaigns that make for some incredibly memorable gaming nights. But, not everybody has the time commitment for a campaign that lasts months (or even years), and even then, just playing through one scenario of a big dungeon-crawling board game can take hours… just to set it up. Dungeon Legends comes in as a tantalising prospect, offering a relatively dungeon-lite experience that gives you the satisfaction of completing a quest without commitment. While this may mean it lacks a certain level of depth, it’s much easier to jump in and have fun with.
Dungeon Legends is set in the world of Chronicles of Avel, designed as a cooperative standalone card-based game, across a campaign that contains 5 chapters, each with increasing difficulty. Where it differs from its complex counterparts is in its simplicity; when opening the box, your first task is to break down and divide the modest components within five chapter boxes, which is a little fiddly but ensures that in future games you can just crack open the box in your chapter of choice and get playing quick.
It’s also not structured the same as other dungeon crawlers. Instead of moving across a map, searching for loot and encountering monsters moving from hex to hex, you’ll largely be on a linear “track”, able to move back and forth along it, activating location abilities at each stop, and battling monster cards that are opposing you. Which monsters or events get activated comes from the luck of the draw, a deck of cards that can trip you up or add more baddies to the board; if you don’t defeat them fast, every turn another gets added, pushing them closer to your castle (home base), and to your defeat.
“…if you don’t defeat them fast, every turn another gets added, pushing them closer to your castle (home base), and to your defeat.”
Each player controls a hero, with a deck of cards that do a variety of actions. They allow you to attack the monster in your current space, or attack one in an adjacent space if it’s a ranged ability. You can also defend, or generate “Dust”, which is Dungeon Legends’ form of mana, allowing you to complete quest objectives and buff your own abilities (for example, some stronger cards you’ll acquire later can do double the damage with a bit of Dust attached). While you’re preventing monsters from approaching, each chapter has its own quest that you’ll need to work together to achieve; this keeps things feeling pretty balanced, as you split focus between combat and progressing your core objective.
Locations on the track are randomised during setup, and some are vital to the chapter itself, while others offer power-ups or bonuses if you travel there. Movement itself is one of your available actions, so again you’ll need to balance how you take advantage of each location. The first chapter, for example, has you collecting water to put out fires, but certain enemies cause the fire to spread to other locations. Another chapter has portals that help you teleport quickly from one location to another, and sometimes events can cause monsters to cause extra damage, and so on.
The random nature of the monster/event deck certainly keeps things interesting, but players hoping for a campaign that is properly connected may feel disappointed. Dungeon Legends has been designed with simplicity at its core, and each chapter can be played separately, without really worrying about what happened previously. While you can have an extra cool card added to your own draw deck, there’s no other way to “level up” your hero and the story itself feels simplistic. When completing a chapter, you just pack it up and move on, which lacks dramatic flair. I wish there was more of a reason to stay with my hero and feel progress, but the designers have gone for a more approachable vibe, which may be suitable for those wanting to try to genre out before diving deep into something more intense.
Its concepts are simple, with some basic deck-building and abilities, along with easy-to-understand iconography that is easy to learn. Given its minimal setup and colourful-yet-dark visuals, it’s easy to get out onto the table and victory won’t take all night to achieve. The different chapter objectives also break things up nicely; they feel distinctly different from one another, despite the gameplay track of locations and fighting monsters being the same throughout.
Seasoned board gamers might find it a little too basic, but for a newbie, Dungeon Legends offers enough fun and variety to be worth the price of admission. You can even replay the chapters if you enjoy it enough, as nothing is destroyed or rendered unusable like in other long-term campaigns, which is a nice touch. While I was yearning for something a bit more challenging, I can definitely see the appeal.
Dungeon Legends is available now in all good board game stores. Thanks to VR Distribution for providing a copy for this review.
About the Author
Luke Mitchell
he/him
Luke spends his time making radio, playing video games, binge-watching TV, getting unreasonably invested in wrestling, hosting bear events and hanging out with his beautiful pets.
