Idle Remorse

Review: Dungeon Dice

By On March 17, 2018 With 3 Comments

Review: Dungeon Dice
Publisher: Parker Brothers
Year: 1977
Tagline: Be first out of the dungeon in Parker Brothers escape game

Dungeon Dice cover looking very 70s

how we met

I met Dungeon Dice at a garage sale in Wisconsin in the summer of 2017. It was one of those sales that I wish had an email sign up because I would love to know when this gentleman has a garage sale; I will be there. At $5 I paid more for Dungeon Dice than I usually pay for garage sale games, but all the games he had for sale were in perfect shape. It was a glimpse into the past, on a single card table.

I tried to bargain with the guy (ok Bill did, I am so bad at that) but he wasn’t having it. I paid $10 for two games and smiled for the rest of the afternoon. I even posted my game finds from that day to the Board Game Geek Facebook page and suffered that judgment.

how it plays

Dungeon Dice is a dice game where you are trying to get multiples of specific icons on the dice, unless it is the guards. You do not want the guards. Your goal is to dig out of the dungeon, and getting multiples of the same dice will get you a certain number of cards. The cards are all just tunnels; their only uniqueness is in what is growing out of the tunnels. But all move you forward. No surprises there.

If you roll two or more of any given icon then you must place them on the walls of the dungeon. If you roll subsequent dice that match then they must join their fellows on the wall.

Image showing dice in the dungeon

Dungeon Dice in a nutshell

When you decide to end your turn, if you rolled 3 of the same dice, you get 1 tunnel card. If you rolled 4, you get 2 tunnel cards. Etc (the rest are pretty unlikely). If you rolled three pairs, including guards, then you also get 1 tunnel card.

If you roll three pairs or two sets of three, scenarios that use all six dice successfully, then you can choose to continue playing and start with a new roll. So a turn may have more than one round of dice-rolling. If you fail then you will lose any tunnel cards you won so far in that turn, not just that roll.

If you roll two guards then you have to keep them aside like any other symbol. The difference is if you roll three guards then your turn immediately ends, you have to turn in any tunnels you won in that turn so far and you have to return a tunnel you already dug back to the deck. Boo!

Sample dice throw with two guards and four non-matching icons

An example of a terrible roll, since the player is likely to get three guards and have nothing else. I’m not sure who rolled this, probably John

The game is totally press your luck, so on a successful roll you can decide whether to continue rolling any remaining dice you have or to walk away with what you have won thus far. If you do continue to roll but do not get another match then your turn is over and there is no big loss. But you do not gain anything (except that minor thrill when you decided to press your luck). Your turn ends either when you decide it does, when none of your thrown dice match or when you get 3+ guards.

Four prisoner cards with pick axe, shovel, spoon and hands

Our heroes, the prisoners, and their different implements

If you wish to slow down another player you can challenge them. To do this, you give up your turn of regular rolling and announce your challenge. Then you, the challenger, roll the dice three times with the goal of getting at least 3 guards. The difference is that if you get even a single guard you may add it to the wall.

If you are successful you steal a tunnel from the player you challenged. And even more than that, if you are successful you may choose to continue challenging the player again. You roll all six dice again and hope for the best, and maybe you will steal an additional tunnel.

Four example tunnels one with mice, one with roots, one with bones, one empty

A tunnel is a tunnel is a tunnel, but here are the different types

If you are not successful then your turn is over and you must return any tunnel cards that you stole in a previous roll from this challenge. That’s the theme, right. If you are unsuccessful then all of the successes up to this point on this turn are wiped out.

The first player to win eight tunnel cards has dug out of the dungeon and is the winner!

how it went

I have played Dungeon Dice a handful of times. There are things that I really like and things that are not so great. So let’s break it down.

The game is fast-paced and works decently for 2, 3 or 4 players. The rules are straight forward and there is very little barrier to play. And the game is so pretty! There is an actual plastic dungeon that gets a board game around it for play. You get the satisfaction of watching your hero dig through those awful tunnels toward freedom, moving gently forward throughout gameplay.

Card showing prisoner digging tunnels with a spoon

I used a spoon to dig towards freedom

The dice are nice, wooden dice. The dungeon is fun. The 70’s colors of primarily yellow and brown are charming.

The less great things are that Dungeon Dice is perhaps too simple. Yahtzee is considered by many to be an antiquated game, but it is far superior in strategy and decision-making to Dungeon Dice. They are not the same, but they are similar enough that the comparison bubbles up. And you might be like, “Wait, can I just play Yahtzee in this cool dungeon?”

Overview of game board with plastic dungeon in the middle to throw the dice

And, my friends, it is a cool dungeon

Personally, when I play a press-your-luck game that starts each turn anew like Dungeon Dice I tend to go a bit overboard. I mean, are stakes ever lower than this? So let’s see how far I can take this thing. The worst case is that I get a combo of highs and lows and there is a distant but realistic possibility I could win with this mindless approach (in other words, that my place is not clear). The middle of the road is I establish myself clearly in last place. The best case is I win spectacularly.

Many of the BGG comments compare Dungeon Dice to the game Can’t Stop, and I agree that this is the inferior game. If I press my luck in Can’t Stop then I can wreck my whole game. It has real consequences because my actions are sticky. I am either moving myself ahead or not, and my opponents are doing the same. Dungeon Dice is different. You could argue that my actions move my tunneling prisoner forward, but not necessarily. They just might. In Can’t Stop your actions do move you forward unless you press your luck to the point of losing that turn. These consequences are real and demand more thoughtful attention.

play or pass

Pass, and it pains me to say so. I lamented on how to rate this since I set myself up with this boolean rating system. I am keeping Dungeon Dice and we’ll probably bring it out every so often for a short filler. But I can’t recommend it as a game. The people on Board Game Geek Facebook that day were right, and it pains me to say that too.

Based on the BGG comments this might be a really great game for kids. It’s simple, it’s clean, it’s just dice chucking. If you find it at thrift it’s worth picking up. But it is not worth seeking out. It’s just not.

Review: the Dr. Laura game

By On March 9, 2018 With No Comments

Review: the Dr. Laura game
Publisher: Hasbro
Year: 1999
Taglines: Morality it matters. I am my kid’s mom. No excuses, just solutions. Character, courage, conscience.

Cover showing pic of Dr. Laura

how we met

This game has been in my collection for over a year now. I found it in my local town thrift shop on my birthday! I know, will my luck never cease? We had a two player game that night, and I recently pulled it out to be enjoyed by our regular four player group.

The back of the box asks, “What would Dr. Laura say? What would you say?” The example question is a pretty good choice, check it out.

Question reads My 13-year old lives with her father. When she comes to visit she wears a spiked collar. I've asked her to stop. She says she just won't visit. Do I stick to my guns?

I mean, what could matter less?

Yes I will pay $1.99 for you, the Dr. Laura game.

how it plays

This is a kind of roll and move game. On their turn, a player rolls the die which has the possibilities of PREACH, TEACH or NAG. Depending on which you roll, you must draw the corresponding card and play it out.

PREACH cards are read by a player other than you. The other player acts as the caller reading the dilemma, and you are giving the advice. All players listen to your advice to the caller before the reader reads Dr. Laura’s advice. Then players will vote on whether your advice was “as good” or “not as good” as Dr. Laura’s advice. If you win the “as good” vote then move your pawn ahead one space. Otherwise you do not move and play passes to the next player.

Sample question where Dr. Laura's advice urges acceptance of a step-child

Okay, every once in awhile Dr. Laura responds with warmth and compassion

TEACH cards are multiple choice. You read the dilemma out loud and all possible choices. Players have chips for A, B and C and secretly choose what they think is Dr. Laura’s answer. If anyone guesses correctly they move ahead one space. If no one guesses correctly then you move ahead one space.

Sample teach card where Dr. Laura urges a mother to confront her daughter for being sexually active and to use any words that come to mind

In case it is difficult to read, Dr. Laura’s answer was B and, yes, she is encouraging the caller to use any words that come to mind

A, B and C voting chips

The voting chips

NAG cards have you read a dilemma out loud to the group. All players are trying to guess what Dr. Laura’s response will be, so they can either make up an answer or agree with a previous answer given. The reader will then read the answer and choose the player whose advice most closely matched Dr. Laura. That player, and anyone that hitched their wagon to that answer, moves ahead one space.

Sample nag card where Dr. Laura urges a husband to try and save his marriage since his kids need both mommy and daddy to be together

ProTip: if you are trying to match Dr. Laura’s advice always opt for a two parent family, no matter how miserable

The first player to reach the FINISH space wins!

how it went

I have a confession to make. My own sense of morality does not align well with that of Dr. Laura. But that’s what makes the game slightly more enjoyable. I am delighted when her advice mentions “holy laws” and her strict belief that a moral compass has its foundation in religion. I am occasionally surprised when she responds with warmth and acceptance, only to be followed by a shunning of diversity and tolerance. And my favorite is when she replies anecdotally, like “this worked for my son” as if that has any bearing on the caller’s situation.

The board for this game is quite small, and I imagine that was a strategic decision to make the game less daunting and more tolerable.

Hand covering just over half of game board

The tiny board, hand for scale

It must have taken ages to make the content for this game. There are so, so many questions. I hunted for quite some time for the spiked collar card so I could report back on Dr. Laura’s answer but alas, I did not find it.

There are a lot of ways you can play this game. You can attempt to match Dr. Laura’s answer, which is the intended purpose and is surprisingly difficult. You can give your own advice earnestly. You can be absurd. We did a little of all these things as the mood struck, which I think is common in trying to make the game work.

Much of Dr. Laura’s advice sounds incredibly judgmental and matter-of-fact. I thought about that for awhile, wondering if that is just part of the role of someone that gives advice. People are giving you deference and you may begin to speak in absolute terms. But that’s rubbish, really. I am a big fan of the advice columnist Carolyn Hax, and even when she is astonished at someone’s attitude she still answers by challenging the perspective of the poster rather than directly applying her own moral judgment. However it could just be a circumstance of removing the conversational aspect of Dr. Laura’s show from the cards. Although having listened to some of her old show in preparation for this post, I would not characterize Dr. Laura as a good listener. Maybe not even a listener.

Die showing preach, teach or nag

All good choices!

Ultimately our game went okay. We had a few laughs, as we always do. I don’t think any of my friends are scrambling to play the game again any time soon. It has potential to be a fun party game with the right crowd, but it has just as much potential to bomb.

play or pass

Oh, pass. The game is a weird novelty and, at least for our group, provides some shock moments that add to the absurdity of this game being considered educational. I thought about following Dr. Laura’s advice and describing my impression of her with any words that come to mind. But this is a the Dr. Laura game review, not a Dr. Laura review. I will say this though: the Dr. Laura game is a game of the past in more ways than its publishing date, and that is something to celebrate.

Review: Input

By On February 27, 2018 With No Comments

Review: Input
Publisher: Milton Bradley
Year: 1984
Tagline: Each Piece Is Preprogrammed, Yet You Control Every Play

Input cover

how we met

Well no surprises here. I found Input at a thrift shop somewhere near Milwaukee. I had never heard of the game before but was charmed by the throwback computer chip look. I also like to pick up the occasional 2 player game for impromptu game nights without our larger group.

how it plays

Input is a 2-player abstract game involving “preprogrammed” play pieces. Each piece indicates on its surface where it can move to on the board. Each player places their pieces on their side of the computer thing so that the empty circles, indicating the starting spaces, are at the bottom for them. This makes it so the players can easily read the pieces from both perspectives.

Each little play piece shows exactly the path it must follow on the game board from beginning to end. There is no turning back. Once the piece reaches its final space it may sit there a bit or move back to the staging or input areas to begin again.

Red pieces lined up ready for play

My view from the starting line

 

On their turns, players can make one move. They can:

  • Move a piece from the staging area to the input area
  • Move a piece from the input area to its starting space on the board
  • Move a piece already on the board to its next space
  • Move a piece in its final space back to the staging or input area

    • The input area can be stacked up to three pieces, but you can only place the top piece from it onto the board. So basically your opponent can see all of your moves right in front of them.

    Shot showing play from red perspective

    Our play

     

    The goal is to capture all of your opponents pieces, which you do one by one by landing on their pieces with your own. You may not land one of your pieces on top of your own, so no stacking on the game board itself – only in the input area. The first player to capture all of the opposite pieces is the winner!

    how it went

    My take on Input matches that of many of its BGG rating comments: it was much better than I expected. It’s kind of like a light chess.

    I think it’s possible to over-think during the game and slow it down considerably, when you really have to just play it out. You can see every possible immediate move of your opponent during your turn, and you can think a couple moves ahead pretty easily. Any more than that and too much changes and you will need to adjust anyway.

    Overhead shot showing pieces in play

    An overhead shot of play. The trays at the sides are for captured pieces

     

    For the most part it just takes one mistake or one Catch-22 to lose a single piece and then the game often goes pretty quickly. It is pretty easy for more pieces of one color to team up and trap fewer pieces of the opposite color.

    play or pass

    Play. If you like light strategy and/or abstract games then this might be right up your alley. The idea of the inanimate computer chip-looking pieces being “preprogrammed” was charming. I think this is well worth a couple of bucks at thrift.

    Designer Diary: Panic Mode | the idea

    By On February 21, 2018 With No Comments

    Panic Mode text

    This entry is about the game Panic Mode!
    a game of office politics during Disaster Recovery

    Please download the Print and Play at panicmode.games or find us on Facebook or Instagram @panicmodegame

    the idea

    Panic Mode was created as part of a meetup (called Panic Mode) with the East Troy Computer Club on the topic of Disaster Recovery. In our Slack channel someone proposed a game as an interactive activity. We originally planned to do a D&D type unfolding scenario. But the ideas kept changing direction and percolating. We talked about just re-skinning common games with the theme. But it just didn’t feel right to me. None of them are how DR works.

    I found myself thinking about a Disaster Recovery game almost constantly for a week or so, pulling in inspiration from games I’ve played and taking parts of them, rejecting the rest because they didn’t make sense in the theme. All this for a meetup.

    I needed a representation of the state that the company was in throughout the incident. From the prototype I had settled on Mainframe, Morale and Customer Satisfaction – the three things in flux during an incident. It was critical to have typical IT office roles. I wanted to use humor to not only acknowledge the difficulties some roles have with other specific roles, but also to point out to them how they can be perceived. All overly simplified, of course.

    My original prototype included a specific power for each role, and no way to track when it had been used – a typical mistake that I removed in later versions. I spent a lot of time thinking about what powers would make sense and how to track them before I opted for the simplicity of letting them go altogether.

    The rest of what I needed was a mechanism that would reflect the ups and downs of an actual incident. The early pitfalls, the office politics, the going-through-the-motions mistakes that can lead to so many incidents that we read about every day. That was the fun part! I created cards to increment or decrement the tracking cards, and some cards have a role effect as well that can change or amplify the main card effect if you are that role.

    Once I settled on how I wanted to approach the game, it all just clicked. I made the tracking and role cards out of poster board and used index cards for the deck. 47 cards just poured out of me, including some of the cards that are still my favorites in the game today.

    Tracking cards Customer Satisfaction, Mainframe, Morale

    This thin deck caused quite an interesting 20-minute game. In play testing I have learned that some players will play a card because it resonates with them, even if it’s not the best play. This happened even in our first prototype game play at the meetup. One person set the tracking cards back to start because it was funny. One person got distracted blasting Eye of the Tiger over the speakers. One person drew the only card that can instantly win the game by stealing it from another player – the only way it can be played. It was a roller coaster ride, but one of my all-time favorites.

    I was quite happy with the prototype I created for that night, but its reception was beyond my expectations. At the time I had only six roles, so we had the full six players and at least that many standing around the conference room watching play, commenting, laughing.

    When the meetup was over, a few people hung out and said that we should make this game for real. It was a nice feeling, and I thought it would be a cool thing to do. (I was blissfully unaware of the amount of work it would be at the time.)

    I personally have always worked best within constraints. My creativity dies in a vacuum. If you are like me, inspiration is everywhere and your next big project may just land in your lap. But if it doesn’t, take a walk, go for a ridealong, talk to an old friend, play a random thrifted game and reinvent it, try to think of the most sedate topic you can and make it fun, anything. Show everyone what they aren’t seeing yet.

    How do you find inspiration?

    Review: Quip Qubes

    By On February 19, 2018 With No Comments

    Review: Quip Qubes
    Publisher: Selchow & Righter
    Year: 1981
    Tagline: Cross Sentence Board Game

    Quip Qubes cover

    how we met

    I found Quip Qubes at a particularly memorable thrift store visit. For one thing, our entire game group was on this trip, which is very unusual. Then there were two young boys at the store wearing matching gymnastics outfits and with matching cookie pillows in their shopping baskets, which was amazing. And we found a penny, which is a bit of an inside joke.

    Generally when there are games where we have some creative freedom, our group enjoys them even if it’s just a one-time play. It gives us the freedom to bring our own humor into the game. Quip Qubes is basically Scrabble but with words instead of letters, so I thought I’d give it a try.

    how it plays

    Quip Qubes is a 2 player (or 2 team) game. Each player receives the same number of dice representing the same words, likely to even the playing field. The first player rolls all 27 of their word cubes. Two of these cubes are stars indicating they can be any word you like. Players then create a sentence using the words at their disposal, making sure to use the star space in the middle of the game board (like Scrabble).

    Cup filled with word dice

    Each player gets a cup to shake and roll their dice

    Scoring is done based on how many words you end up using, by squaring the number of words used. Yes. So if you use four words you get 16 points, five words is 25 points, six words is 36 points and so on. The max is 15 words for 225 points. Additionally some of the spaces on the board have numbers on them that are just added onto this score.

    Punctuation is implied, so let your freak flag fly and make the longest, most beautiful sentence you can.

    how it went

    Bill and I played this together and immediately noticed the biggest criticism of this game, which is that all you have to do is make a sentence 15 words long to max out your score at 225 (plus any extra points on the board). It’s a broken game.

    Bill went first and made a 285 point sentence that read:
    I began with none of what last had been real money as if that mattered

    The problem is, by going first Bill is required to use that star in the middle, so he really only has two options of horizontal or vertical and they are the same, points-wise.

    By going second I had many, many more options and could also make a 15-word sentence, but I could place it for maximum points. This netted me 295 points, even though it’s kind of terrible:
    A man who was too cute that with their back told them I want that

    27 word cube dice showing words in play

    My word choices in first roll

    Bill then had a lot more options and ended up scoring 150 on his second sentence.

    Then I was absolutely committed to using all of my remaining words in a sentence to score very high. I think if you go first, you probably can’t win. You just simply aren’t set up with enough options to beat your opponent. The even playing field gives you the same word possibilities and the same number of words, but Player 1 has less options to maximize points.

    The board showing all cubes in place, slightly misplaced

    Our game just after Bill pretended to flip it

    play or pass

    Pass. There is talk of house rules to make the game better, and you could come up with a few of them quite easily to improve gameplay. But I don’t think it would save the game. The best thing I can think of is different blackout boards that limit the playable game board, and expands the board as you go through turns. Kind of like Inner Circle. You would place all the blackout boards right over the game board and it would limit which spaces are available for play. Then that play area would expand – a little – by lifting the top blackout board and revealing the next one for the next turn. That would prevent the 15 word sentences as well as force creativity in a more realistic sentence structure.

    Oh gosh I kind of want to try that. Bill is going to kill me.

    Newer Posts
    Older Posts
    © 2024 Idle Remorse —