The life of a dungeon explorer is hard. You wake up daily and go through your list as you drop into the dragon’s home. Early in the morning you go through your list: Traverse the dungeon. Grab the loot. Wield the weapon. Kill the monster. Avoid the traps. Dungeon crawling is a tough job and not every is up for the challenge. But the question you need to ask yourself as you and your team jump into the dungeon-are you ready to be the best one right now? Today we look at the familiar dungeon crawl and really “flip” it on its side!
Deadly Doodles is a 2-4 player game from Steve Jackson Games designed by Sam Mitschke and Randy Scheunemann and illustrated by Katie Cook. It plays in around 20 minutes.
Setup and Gameplay
Deadly Doodles comes out of the box with 4 dry erase boards, 4 dry erase markers and 36 cards.
Gameplay is simple: each player takes a board and a marker to start. The deck is shuffled and put in the middle of the play area. The game plays over 7 rounds and then is scored at the end. Each round 4 cards are drawn showing various pathways or traps that can be drawn on your board. You may draw them in any order on your dungeon map. Each round there is a small box in the upper left corner to wrote the round number in.
Each path drawn must link to either an entryway or a previously drawn segment on the map. If you cannot place a segment for any reason you add a tally to the score column for that at the bottom of the board. Each round 4 new cards are revealed and then discarded until the 7th round is completed. Scoring is calculated on all paths drawn.
Treasures are scored at 2 points and then doubled if you cross the path of the dragon. Each weapon is 1 point and each monster you hit that matches a weapon you crossed scores at 4 points each. But be careful-monsters you cross without the corresponding weapon in your inventory by the end of the game are -2 points each. Each entrance you don’t use is 1 point. Each trap you set that is crossed by another player on their map is scored at -3 points each for them. Tally up the scores and the player with the highest count is the top dungeon crawler!
Impressions
What could be better:
Color. The art on the box is great. Katie Cook had done some great work on previous Munchkin games and she continues to do so on this title. However those all white dry erase boards are very simple and lack the shine that is on the box. I would love to see some color on it to really get those boards to pop.
Player count. I would personally love to see this one go up to 6 players, and I think it is doable with maybe only one trap so as not to completely destroy everyone’s dungeons. But above 4 would be a good way to go for this one and I may try getting two games to se how well they play together.
Things I liked:
Draw and draw. Roll and write, roll and draw, draw and write-there’s been so many different versions out there. But this one gives us a little different mechanic in that is a draw and draw. You draw cards and then draw on your dungeon the pathways. I love that and it is an easy way to explain this game.
Speed. I love a good, quick game that is fun and plays in less than 20 mins. This fits in that window perfect and plays 2-4 people well. We have used it waiting for others to join us at game night, we have used it for an end-cap to the night. The quickness of this game makes it a great addition to my game bag almost every game night.
Fun. This game is straight up fun. It is a quick thematic crawl through the dungeon and I love the ease it hits the table and how much everyone who has played it seems to enjoy it. This game just oozes fun even in the attention to detail in the art and design. I love how the pathway cards have “hand-drawn” paths that aren’t perfect straight lines.
Overall
This game is everything I love about a good dungeon crawl smashed and compressed into a quick, enjoyable experience. What Munchkin did when it came out was to really flip the idea of killing monsters and looting the treasure into a whole new game genre. This flip and flip takes another fresh look at the dungeon crawl and really hits it out of the park with an enjoyable gaming experience that can be played by young and old, experienced and novice gamers alike. Everyone who has had a chance to play this has loved it and I definitely see it being high on my top list of 2019!
Promotional consideration provided in the form of a review copy
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