Dungeon Twister
The easy way is always twisted!
All the might of your group of adventurers is not enough! Your courageous characters have been captured and summarily thrown into the fortress of a rich and powerful wizard. He is a cruel and vicious man who is bored to death and keeps himself occupied by watching his prisoners skillfully navigate the traps of his infernal mechanical labyrinth.
And since we all now the old saying, No pain, no gain, there isn’t just one but two groups of enemy adventurers in the sinister dungeon! Two groups that will come face to face and must fight in hand to hand combat in order to return to the surface and once again taste freedom!
Take control of eight characters with different magical powers : warrior, troll, thief, priest, wizard… and head straight towards the dungeon’s exit!
The mission isn’t going to be easy and not only must you contend with fighting your opponents, the ground upon which you find yourself is unstable. The rooms turn and reveal new pathways, doors close and the beautiful route to victory that you just found is now a minefield of traps!
So, to play and win this game, you must choose your weapons : speed, trickery or strength and above all, give it everything you’ve got and use your powers of strategy!
User Reviews (2)
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Disclaimer: The main goal of “Down to the Basics Reviews” is to show what the game is about, getting down to the basics, the bare minimum necessary to captivated the reader.
So, about Dungeon Twister:
1) What it is?
A battle/race that mixes fantasy characters, items and dungeons with abstract strategy-like game play.
2) How do you play?
Shuffle the mini-boards and place them face down. Put your characters and items, one at a time, face down, in one of the mini-boards or in your starting line. Then you can reveal or rotate boards, move characters, attack, jump over traps, unlock, lock or destroy doors, pick or drop items and, finally, escape from the dungeon. The winner is the first to achieve 5 points. You gain point by killing your enemy and escaping with your characters (some items give extra points if you carry them out)
3) What are the decisions that you make?
– Decide where to put your characters and items
– Decide how many actions you will take each turn (from 2 to 5 actions)
– Execute actions: move a character, reveal a board, rotate a board, jump (with special card or special ability), pick up objects, drop objects, unlock door, lock door, destroy door, use item, attack
– When a board is revealed, all tokens (characters and objects) are revealed and each player places the tokens of the other player in the dungeon.
– If you choose to attack you must add the attack of your character, plus any bonus from objects, plus the value of an attack card (range from 0 to 6). An used card must be discarded, except the zero card. The loser flip the character to indicate that he is wounded. A second successful attack will kill the character.
4) What is good about it?
The planning. This is a game of strategy, carefully calculations and outmaneuvering. It has intense interaction: fights, turns of the boards and blockades, outguessing combat system, offering several paths to victory.
5) What is not so good about it?
It is prone to analysis paralysis and it may be dry for some people because the theme is not really there. It has dungeons, fire balls, thiefs, mages, trolls and warriors but the game is less about the theme and more about the movements of the pieces.
6) What it feels when you play it?
As it has a low lucky factor (basically the initial position of the boards), it is mainly a clash of brains. As it demands heavy thinking, it is a tense experience, you will relax only after the game has finished.
My friend and I picked this up from our local gaming store in 2006, looking for a strong two-player strategy game. Something to play when our girlfriends who hated heavier games weren’t around. A game for MEN, INTELLIGENT MEN, with a long running board game rivalry. The store owner turned us onto this, and we still play it to this day, at least 5 times a year.
Each character has their own special ability, and there are items all around to help out. Some disarm traps. Others more efficiently twist the dungeon rooms (hence the name). A couple are ranged combat, most are melee.
The character stats are easy to memorize, and are listed on their cardboard standees for those who haven’t memorized yet. What the items do are obvious, but can make a real difference in combat.
The object is to get 5 Victory Points. You can try to run all your guys out your opponents side of the board, or maybe you get the treasure out. You can try eliminating all your opponents characters, or combine them all for faster victory.
The theme isn’t all that strong, but I play it not for theme, but strategy. Early on there was a lot of thinking pauses and what not, but now a days our games go pretty quick, with a single wrong move costing you the game.
I feel this is a definite buy for the long-term, best friend rivals.