Dungeon Petz

Vlaada Chvatil is back with another game to help those misunderstood dungeon lords protect their investments from those pesky adventurers. While Dungeon Petz takes place in the same world as the previously released Dungeon Lords, don’t feel that you need to have played Dungeon Lords to jump into, and enjoy, Dungeon Petz.

In Dungeon Petz, your imps have opened a pet selling business. Throughout the game, you’ll be sending out imps to get different items – using a worker placement mechanic – that are needed to raise pets. Outside of this phase, the main focus is raising your pets, which will have specific needs that need to be met each turn. Once those are dealt with (I discuss how that works below), all rounds but the first (there are six total) will have an exhibition that you can plan for. These exhibitions allow you to gain reputation points (this game’s name for VPs needed to win). Each exhibition will be scored based on the need cards you played on your pets, allowing you to (try to) plan ahead of time what type of needs your pet should have.

As you’re in the pet selling business, you will then have the option of selling your pets to customers. Each customer wants a certain type of pet and will give more points if they have certain need cards played on them, and fewer points for other types of cards. Customers are known a few rounds in advance, so you can attempt to plan for them.

In the end, there is a final scoring using the exhibition model, after which you can finally relax and think of how you’ll do things differently the next time you play.

Dungeon Petz is fairly involved, so I’ll spend a good amount of time talking through what you’ll be doing. If you’re primarily interested in my thoughts on the game, please jump past the following section).

Game Play
The game will play over 5 rounds (with a final scoring following). Each round has 6 phases. The rules for each phase aren’t overly difficult, but put together there are a lot of little rules. Once you know the rules, the iconography of the player aid that is part of your player board makes sense (but is very cryptic until you know those rules).

Phase 1 – Here you’re primarily setting up the board (making new item available), and getting income. New pets, cages, food, add-ons, and artifacts are put out for the round. You’ll also get 2 gold (1 if you’re the start player).

Phase 2 – Worker placement phase (shopping). Each player will secretly put their imps in groups (you start with 6). Each group can also include any amount of gold (but a group must have at least one imp). Once you reveal your groups, the player with the largest group (determined by the sum of imps + gold in a group) places that group first (ties broken by start player, and clockwise from them). The largest groups go first, taking the item they want once placed. This mechanic is a nice twist on worker placement, as you’re secretly “bidding” in hopes of getting the spaces you want. When it is your turn to place a group, you always have the choice to not send them out, holding them back for later.

Phase 3 – Assign the locations of cages, add-ons, and pets (you could potentially have up to four of each). This is the phase where you will assign need cards to your pets. Each pet will have on it icons representing how many cards they need, and what color they are. As pets age, they grow and require more cards. You draw cards of the appropriate colors as shown on each of your pets. These are added to your hand of cards that has one card of each of the four colors. Now, you’ll need to assign one need card of the correct color for each icon on the pet (in essence, you’ll be playing a number of cards equal to what you just drew). This is the main puzzle part of the game, and where a large amount of your time will be spent. The following rounds, as well as the continued health of your pet, will depend on how you play the cards.

Each card will have a need on it. The four colors each have a need that shows up on half of its cards, and the other half will have an assortment of needs (the player aid on your board shows the distribution). This means that if your animal has a lot of green cards, you’re most likely to have to feed it, but it’s not guaranteed that will be the cards you draw (red is most often anger, yellow is most often play, and purple is most often magic).

Phase 4 – Here you’ll address the need cards you just played on your pets, and enter the exhibition. Need cards are done in a particular order (again shown on the player aid). In general, if you have assigned a need but aren’t able to meet is (such as feeding, or playing), your animal receives a suffering token. Imps you held back in Phase 2 can be used to meet play needs. Additionally, you’ll compare the anger needs to the cage strength (red). If the anger is greater than the strength, you’ll have to assign held back imps to make up the difference (which go to the hospital) or the animal breaks out and runs away. Similarly, you’ll compare magic needs to the magic strength of the cage. If the magic needs are too great, your pet will mutate. If you ever have two mutation counters, the pet disappears. You’ll also have to deal with poop and sickness.

Once all of these needs are taken care of, you’ll enter the exhibition. The exhibition tile will have been seen ahead of time. Some are single pet, others are all pets. The exhibition will give positive points for certain needs, and negative points for needs/items (suffering, sickness, mutations, and poop may all be bad). The points you gain are compared to the opponents, and you’ll score reputation points based on your order of finish.

Phase 5 – In this phase, you’ll get to do what you had i mind when you started a pet business; you can sell a pet to a customer. Somewhat akin to the exhibition, a customer will want certain things (need cards) from a pet, and give more match points, and will give fewer points for other things (e.g. some like hunger, others don’t). You’ll get reputation points equal to either 2x or 3x the match points, depending on whether you sell from the black market (2x) or from an imp placed on the platform (3x) during the worker placement phase. You’ll also get money based on the pet’s sale value. There is also a “clean-up phase” where you can use extra imps to clean poop or gain gold.

Phase 6 – Not much to do here, it’s more of a maintenance phase. Pets grow (gain more needs), excess food may start to/finish spoil(ing), and you get your imps back for the next round.

There are a few other things not directly mentioned here (gaining new imps, judging in the competition, going to the hospital) that exist, but you’ll pick those up once you start to play, they’re not the focus of the game like keeping up and selling your pets, and doing exhibitions.

My Thoughts

I find Dungeon Petz to be a slightly more accessible and quicker playing game than its predecessor. There is definitely overlap in the theme, but you don’t have to have played the first game to figure out what’s going on here (you may just miss a few of the jokes in the rulebook). In Dungeon Lords there are two very different phases (building up the dungeon, and then defending from the adventurers). The phases flow a bit better into each other in Dungeon Petz. It’s not as deep of a game because of this, allowing for a wider audience than Dungeon Lords.

Similar to Dungeon Lords, Dungeon Petz initially sounds like a lot of rules, but once you play a couple of rounds, everything comes together and makes sense. There is nothing really difficult rules-wise here, just a lot of moving pieces to keep track of. Thankfully, the player aid that is incorporated into the player board is very well done (once you know how to read it), and keeps the game moving along.

A moment needs to be taken to mention the art and theme of the game, which will likely be a main selling point. The same artist from Dungeon Lords is back, and the art is fantastic. All over the board are images of imps (even going out onto the VP track). The pets themselves will be enough to sell the game to many people. They are very whimsical, and all have a cute backstory (as do the customers). You’ll notice immediately when reading the rules that a thematic element has been added to everything you do (which will also help you remember the rules).

The components are well done. The pets will be the main point of interest. They require assembly, which takes ~10 seconds each, after which no extra work is needed. They are egg shaped, and consist of two pieces connected by a fastener. The top piece shows the animal and type of food they eat. The main information is on the bottom piece, which shows the need cards for different ages, how much a pet grows in a round, and its sale value. It is clear that the pet setup has been well thought through, and the needed information is very clearly shown. Overall, they are very well done, down to the selection of fasteners that allow them to stay in place, yet still rotate easily.

Dungeon Petz isn’t quite the brain burner that Dungeon Lords was, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t strategy aplenty. The worker placement phase seems new and interesting, allowing a player to choose what size groups to use, and getting to place them based on that size. You won’t run into the problem of Dungeon Lords where you may select an action and have it not be there. That doesn’t mean you’ll get the actions you want in Dungeon Petz, but when it is your turn to play, you’ll at least know immediately what is available to you. If you really needed an action in Dungeon Lords turn order may have stopped you from getting to it before your opponents. In Dungeon Petz if you really need that action, all you need to do is form a group larger than what your opponents put together (of course, you don’t know what size groups they’ll be putting together).

I really get the feel, as the pets age, that an older pet needs more attention. There will come a time where you are happy to sell it off so you no longer have to deal with it. The planning for exhibitions and customers are well done. That said, you’ll quickly find that Dungeon Petz is a game of minimizing bad things happening, possibly more so than optimizing good things. You’ll always wish you had more actions, or different need cards, but you do the best you can, and try to keep the damage to a minimum.

I’m finding I enjoy Dungeon Petz a little more than Dungeon Lords, in large part because it is more accessible than Dungeon Lords thus giving you more potential opponents. If the theme of raising pets appeals to you, give Dungeon Petz a try, it’s well worth your time!

I really like the game, with a fun theme, fantastic components, and a unique playstyle that mixes Dungeon Lords with monster ranching.

The main problem is, this is easily the most complicated game board/player screen/rule set I’ve ever seen in any game marketed towards the ‘casual’ crowd. Sure, there are far more complex strategy games out there, but most of those revolve around interstellar conflict, world war, or building cities in Europe. I didn’t expect a game with cute monsters on the cover to take nearly a full hour to learn.

I just feel that they really could have simplified the system in some way that wouldn’t have detracted from the experience. As it is, its almost impossible to keep anything straight. When you do ‘get it’, though, it’s a very fun and enjoyable worker placement game.