Sometimes, I just want to don the armor of a Hero, the staff of a wizard, the powerful words of a Cleric or the cunning of a Rogue. I want to punch a kobold, grab a chest of gold or kick down a door. Dungeon crawling is how many of us got started in gaming, whether it was Dungeons and Dragons, Zelda, Munchkin, The Amazing Labyrinth, Duke Nukem or every other version of a game that involved going into an area, beating up the bad guys and picking up the treasures. But a quick dungeon crawl? Those sometimes don’t live up to the meat of a game you are looking for. A long, drawn out journey? That can be too much at times. So what about a game that falls right in the middle, giving you the fleshed out quests in a reasonable amount of time? Get ready to boogie because I have just the game for you.
Dungeon Hustle is a game from WizKids designed by Ben Eisner and developed by Tim Eisner. Illustrated by Aaron Boyd with graphic design by Brigette Indelicato, this game plays 2-4 players with a recommended age of 14+ and a time of 45 mins.
Components:
This is smaller-box size game, paperback novel size. The game comes with everything you need to play including:
96 dungeon tiles
20 quest cards
28 item cards
4 characters with standees
4 monsters with standees
4 character power cards
4 quick reference cards
4 corner pieces
30 cardboard coins
The game is setup with a 7 by 7 grid of dungeon tiles with the center square and the corner tiles left open. Those are filled in with the corner tiles, and the leftover dungeon cards are put in the middle space. 3 monster standees are added to the edge pieces, and quests of level 1, 2, 3 are added to the quest spaces. A stack of 1, 2, 3 level item cards are put near the edge also.
Each player takes a character and their matching standee, character card and quick reference card. A tracking token is placed on the top level of the dungeon and the desired escape monster track difficulty level.
Gameplay
Dungeon Hustle is both a cooperative and competitive game that pits players against each other to collect treasure cards to fulfill quests while at the same time cooperating with each other to keep monsters from escaping the dungeon. Each time a monster escapes, the track moves one space down, and if it reaches full red skull the game is over and the players lose to the monsters. Changing the level makes it an easier or harder game, allowing anywhere from 3-5 monsters to escape based on the difficulty.
Turn order-On each players turn, a series of steps will occur. They include:
1-Hustle
At the heart of the dungeon is the crawl. In this game, it is a hustle. On your turn, you hustle from one color tile to a matching colored tile as far as you can. You can move in any direction, sideways or diagonal. You stop at a corner tile, player, monster or different color tile. All the tiles you landed on of the same color you collect, and proceed from there. The different icons on the tiles will allow you to have combat or purchase power in the next turns.
2-Wandering Monsters
Once you clear the tiles, you replace them from the center stack. Each one with a monster attack on the tile will require the current player to discard a shield token card or a random card from their hand if they don’t have shields.
3-Combat
If you landed on a space with a monster, it is time to go toe-to-toe with that foe. To defeat a monster your attack must be greater or equal to his power. Each player has an attack of zero that is increased through sword cards, class abilities, items or requesting help from a fellow player.
Once you add to the monster’s combat by discarding so many cards from the top of the deck and adding swords and monster attack cards, you assess your combat vs the monster. If you have more than the monster you win. You defeat
him and remove the goblin from the board and take the gold equal to the dungeon level track reward. If you lose, he boots you to another adjacent empty space and you lose one card at random
4-Questing
If you end on a corner piece, you can complete the quest pictured on the face up card if you have the matching item cards. Similar items on a card must be different colors. You get the reward listed, including coins and keep it for end-game scoring of victory points as well. The corner spot you are on becomes the new monster spawn location and the current spawn spot flips up its top card and becomes the new quest location
5-Monsters spawn and Move
If there is less than 4 monsters on the board, a new one will spawn in an order that matches the color of a revealed card. Next all other monsters that did not just spawn will move. The ones on matching colors from the revealed card move one spot closer to the center exit spot. If a monster escapes, you advance the escaped monster counter by one. If it reached the final spot this turn the game is over.
6-Resting
Finally, you can recharge your powers here and buy items. If you have the key dungeons cards, you can discard them for trinkets, treasures or artifacts. Each item can be charged and uncharged. The charged one is ready to use and you tap it to uncharge and use it. You may only have 3 of these at a time. The item has an action at the bottom you can use and a recharge cost at the top along with a victory point total.
As the game advances, you can level up your character and use their helping powers to help another characters in their combat phase. This will unlock a reward for you as well, and you will need to recharge it to be able to use it again.
Once the center square spot is exhausted, you reshuffle in the discard pile and drop a level into the dungeon, moving the tracker making the monsters stronger but also more rewarding to defeat.
The game ends when the monsters escape or your team exhausts the deck 3 times. Monsters win if they all escape and the players win if you get through the deck. If you make it that far, individual scoring looks at your character level, gold coins, items and quests completed. The player with the most victory points takes the top spot!
Impressions
Things that could be better:
-The rulebook. To be honest, there are a lot of symbols and icons in this game, and they look great but there isn’t a general list or glossary for what some of them mean and I did find myself checking to make an educated decision a few times.
-Size. The game is quick to setup, but definitely takes some time some space to setup and run. You want to leave plenty of room for discard piles and tokens as this game moves quickly.
Things I liked:
-The style. The art and design on this is solid. It is simple yet does exactly what I would expect from a dungeon crawling game, making the icons and word large enough to get the decision making across.
-The speed. This games setups up and plays quick. You get the depth without the length of time which can be hard for this type of game to pull off well.
-The cooperative nature of a competitive game. This isn’t a huge thing, but I love games that force me to work together with others enough to survive but ultimately still give me a chance to come out on top. I can be a winner two times over in this game!
Final Thoughts:
Dungeon Hustle allows you to move, jump and shake all around the depths of a dungeon as an adventurer looking for trouble and treasure. It scratches the itch for me of everything I love about a crawl without all of the setup and extras. It gets right down to the fun parts and really engages you with the other players to win together or lose to the game, while still providing a chance to come out on top as the best adventurer in the land! Check it out at your local game store!
