hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2174.txt

Episode: 2174
Title: HPR2174: Dungeoneer Tabletop Game
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2174/hpr2174.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 15:19:03

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This is HPR episode 2,174 entitled Dungeonia Tabletop Game.
It is hosted by Klaatu and is about 43 minutes long.
The summary is Klaatu reviews the Dungeonia RPG card game.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by Ananasthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
That's HPR15.
It's a web hosting that's honest and fair at Ananasthost.com.
Hi everyone, this is Klaatu.
You're listening to Hacker Public Radio.
This episode is an entry into my Tabletop gaming series.
And this time I want to talk about a game called Dungeonia.
Specifically, I want to talk about Dungeonia mostly from a solitaire game perspective.
Although it's not, it wasn't written as a solitaire game.
It just happens to swing that way fairly successfully if you let it.
There's also a video game called Guild of Dungeonia nearing, I think, or something like that.
That's got no relation to this whatsoever.
So Dungeonia I came across because I was looking for a game with solid RPG mechanics.
RPGs are fine because you kind of need people to play an RPG with,
and it's not really a two-player enterprise.
I think four people, three as players, one is Dungeon Master,
Game Master, whatever you want to call them, I think kind of the right number.
And that's sometimes, you know, that takes work to get something like that together.
So I wanted something with all the RPG mechanics,
but without necessarily the burden of having to sort of have a RPG group,
a reliable group to play with.
So I came across two different games.
One was Pathfinder, and one is Dungeonia.
So Pathfinder is a Dungeon and Dragon fork.
Circa Dungeons and Dragons, three, or 3.5, I think.
I forget which.
And that seemed promising because they have a card variant,
where it's a lot of, you know, based on cards and stuff,
but what I could tell from online, and I'm not sure,
but my impression was that it was, that certainly the solitaire play of it
would be dependent upon sort of scripted adventures,
which I felt would be a little bit limiting
because once you get through the scripts, then you're kind of on your own.
So I kind of wanted, I kind of chose not to go down that path,
and investigate Pathfinder because Pathfinder, not Pathfinder, Dungeonier.
Because Dungeonier is, it's entirely a card game.
It relies on nothing but cards.
Well, that's not true, but a little bit more on that in a minute.
And the point of the game, as the name more or less suggests,
is that it's a classic dungeon crawler.
You know, you explore dynamically expanding dungeons.
You fight monsters, you complete quests, you get treasure, power,
and you level up even, there's even a level up mechanic.
So it's everything that you would find in an RPG,
either digital or tabletop, wrapped up in a card game.
The Dungeonier game itself is by Atlas Games,
which is this game studio that publishes Gloom,
which you may remember from, I think the very first entry of this,
well, not really, a recent entry in this series, Gloom,
but Gloom itself is apparently from what sort of people say online
is the spiritual successor to Dark Colts.
And that, you will remember, certainly, from the first entry in this series.
Dark Colts is the game that I revived as Dark Oak Cult on GitLab.com,
slash Knott, Clat 2 slash Dark occult.
And it's a really fun storytelling game.
It's completely based on storytelling and completely devoid of RPG mechanic.
And I think you could almost argue that Dungeonier is the exact flip opposite of that.
It's all the RPG mechanic without really any kind of story behind it,
which is in a way a strength, because, like I say,
a lot of solo games that you're going to find out there with an RPG mechanic
rely heavily on the story, because RPGs traditionally do.
Dungeonier kind of alleviates that concern.
You don't need to find a story to play through in order to play the game.
You can just play the RPG mechanic.
So the game itself, when you purchase it, and I should probably mention,
the game comes in, like, eight different varieties.
They've got eight boxes of Dungeonier cards.
And it's not a Magic the Gathering type thing,
where you have to collect all of the cards to level up or whatever.
It's not like that. Each box is actually a self-contained game.
But interestingly, you can also combine them to play a big mega game as well.
The only thing to be aware of there is that two of those sets are called,
one is called Epic and one is called Legendary.
And if you get an Epic or a Legendary set, you are actually starting all your characters at level four,
which I have found to be overwhelming. So don't do that.
If you do go out and look at Dungeonier as a game,
get a box that does not start with level four characters.
It may not really say it very loudly on the box.
I accidentally bought an Epic card set,
thinking that I was getting the beginner, you know, the intro,
like a standalone game, and it turns out that all the characters are at level four,
which you might think, well, that doesn't really matter.
Well, it kind of does because at level four you get more quests, you get more actions.
And when you're just starting out, you have no idea what to do with actions anyway.
So having more of them is actually a little bit more confusing.
So I strongly suggest getting a non-Epic, non-legendary dungeonier set for yourself.
I got them used at $10 a box.
I got two boxes. One was the realm of the Ice Witch,
and the other was the Tomb of the Lich Lord.
That's the Epic one.
So realm of the Ice Witch is a great one to start with.
And it comes with 110 cards.
The game itself consists of, like, of these 110 cards,
of a map area, which you build with map cards.
And that's the area that your character explores during the course of the game
in order to complete quests.
A quest given to your hero in the form of a quest card
usually requires a character to go to a specific area on the map
and retrieve either an object or kill or a person or kill a monster
or achieve some task in this area.
Now, since your map starts with only five cards,
the entrance card and then fork one card on each side,
you might have to sort of abide your time
before you get the area that you need to be in.
So that's kind of cool.
So it kind of encourages exploration.
You're kind of forced to continue to draw map cards
and build out the area, your play area,
because until you find the volcanic plateau
or the abandoned, the lonely forest or whatever,
before you find these areas, you have to,
before you can complete quests in them, you have to find them.
So there's an exploration element to a game kind of built in.
Now, the problem is that while you're attempting to explore your environment,
you're also being bombarded by demons and traps
and curses in all manner of evil.
So the longer you stay alive, the more glory points they call it,
the more glory you get, which you can spend on power-ups,
which they call boons, and kind of special weapons and things like that.
Now, at the same time, as you collect all these glory points for staying alive,
you're also amassing peril points as they call it.
So you're amassing sort of potential negative energy
that the dungeon itself or the AI or your opponent,
if you're playing with other people, can use against you
to send in monsters or traps or curses or whatever.
So that's the push and the pull of the game,
is that as you explore, you're getting the potential
to find cool things in the form of glory points,
but you're also amassing all of this potential evil stuff
as well that can get used against you at the same time.
So it's a really interesting mechanic,
one that both rewards and punishes you for staying alive.
But it makes sense, like if you think about it,
if you're exploring a dungeon or a cursed wasteland,
then yeah, you would be finding rewards, you know, gaining glory,
but you're also constantly at greater and greater risk
because the more you stay out there, the more likely you are
to get discovered by some evil entity that wants to kill you.
Happens all the time.
And that's the game, really.
It's an exploration of what will generically call the dungeon
even though it might be, like I say, a frozen wasteland
or a desert or a woodland or whatever.
And there's danger around every corner.
And your survival depends larger than how you budget
your character's strengths.
When you pull out that power up,
when you save a turn or when you conserve energy
or whatever for an attack and a counter attack,
that kind of thing.
And there's a lot of dice rolling combat and stuff like that
in there as well.
That's how all the combat encounters get settled
on the rules of dice.
So it's all the mechanics, as I said, of an RPG
without the storytelling, which can be a strength for sure
because sometimes you don't want to get sort of invested
in a story for one reason or another.
Either because you don't have enough players to sort of help
build a story or because you don't want to go to the
trouble of finding a story for a scripted story
or just because you don't want to put the thought
and effort into it.
Like, having played dark cults frequently,
I can definitely agree that sort of getting immersed
in a story that you're building as you're playing these cards.
It takes a lot of mental kind of focus, really.
I mean, you don't have to focus on it.
But if you're constantly getting interrupted while you're playing,
it does tend to sort of, you know,
it takes away from the game.
So you could think of Dungeon Year as kind of the analog
equivalent of like, you know, a hack and slash game,
like gauntlet or something like that.
It's just kind of like just getting in there,
running around, looking for treasures
and looking for trouble, really.
That's Dungeon Year, which is a lot of fun.
I would say as someone who likes sort of immersing themselves
in a world of fiction,
I don't think it would be a horrible thing for Dungeon Year
to have some extra lore, you know, kind of like a nice,
big core rule book, you know, a Dungeon Dragon
or a Shadow Run style, sort of 400 page.
You know, here are all the rules
and here's all the history of the land and the world.
And this is why these monsters are here.
This is why this magic exists.
This is where it came from.
This is why these portals exist.
This is why these plane shifts exist.
You know, all these different things.
I wouldn't mind reading up about that
just because that's kind of the person I am.
You know, I kind of am largely frequently
into something sort of for the world building aspect.
But by no means is necessary.
And like I say, to some degree,
they would be out of place here,
because it is kind of just like,
it's a hack and slash game at the end of the day.
That's what it is.
And certainly there's an implied story,
whether you kind of follow that or not,
is up to you,
but there's flavor text on all the cards.
So you get little hints of kind of what a story
behind it all might be.
And you can't, like I say,
there are like eight different varieties
or six if you ignore the upper level ones.
Six different varieties of decks that you can purchase.
And, you know, with names like
Realm of the Ice Witch, for instance.
I mean, if you can't invent a backstory
for this Ice Witch yourself,
at least to some degree,
then you're probably not really aching for a story
in the first place,
because it's just,
it's kind of, it kind of begs your,
you know, it's one of those things that just kind of
get your imagination going,
regardless of what it says.
I guess it's one of those times where
what is,
what is not said is sometimes more powerful
than what is said.
And that's kind of where,
where dungeon year,
I think leverages things quite well,
because it's got beautiful art.
It's got just enough flavor text
to kind of give you an idea that,
oh, there is,
there's a complete world behind this.
I mean, I don't know that there is.
It could all just be on the fly.
Like, let's reference this old demon
and pretend like that's significant.
And you're just like,
in your mind as a player,
you're just like,
oh, my gosh,
this all ties back to this old demon
and somehow,
that's going to be important later on,
even though it's never really important.
So, yeah, you know,
it's enough story.
At the end of the day,
it's enough to kind of keep you satisfied.
And in the game,
in practice,
you're not going to care why this demon is attacking you.
You don't need to know its life story.
You don't need to know the name of its wife and kids.
You just need to kill it.
You need to kill it fast.
And that's good enough.
So, the cards themselves,
if you look at them either online
or if you purchase a box,
you will notice that graphically,
they've been designed,
thankfully by someone who's actually played the game,
probably several times.
It's very, very clear.
For instance,
the power-up cards,
the boon cards,
and even the bans,
like the enemy cards,
they get all the summaries
of all the different abilities and powers
that that card grants your character
or the monster that it's helping.
And that's fine,
but down the left edge of the card,
they put the icons
and the numbers of the power-ups
that you're getting.
And at first glance,
that might look like it's overcrowding things,
but then once you start laying it out on your table
and you realize just how many cards you have,
your tendency,
or at least my tendency,
is to try and consolidate.
And because the cards have
on the left edge
all the important information,
you can actually stagger your cards
or kind of layer them,
and so you just have like just your power-up cards
with essentially just the pertinent information.
You know, once again,
you don't really care why you're getting a boost
of one bonus on your melee attack.
You just know that you're getting a plus one bonus
on your melee attack.
Like, does it really matter?
Not really.
I mean, it matters when you first get the card
and you're kind of looking at it,
and you're just kind of like you want to know why
you've suddenly been blessed with more speed
or more attack or whatever,
more power, whatever strength.
But once you've catalogued it,
you don't need to know the details.
You just need to know.
Right now, I've got a plus one in effect,
a plus one of magic in effect,
and this special ice sword
that's going to give me plus two
if I'm on an ice waste land when using it.
You know, and that's all you need to know.
And it's all right there on the left edge,
so you don't have to go rifling through your cards.
You can just set them down on your table.
You see them.
You know what you've got.
It makes things a lot faster.
And the flow itself of the game,
in terms of kind of like how they designed it to work,
it's quite familiar.
If you've ever played Baldur's Gate
or Dragon's Age,
or any RPG game ever,
then you kind of get,
you know how the game is supposed to go.
You have a set of actions
that you can choose from during each turn.
You have some quests that you want to accomplish.
You've got a goal.
You have to manage your own combat,
boons, and your health level,
and kind of keep accounting
of your peril and glory points.
All while you're coming up with a strategy
to actually accomplish your quest,
which of course is all dependent on how well you explore
and stay alive on the map.
You're up against the clock, too,
because there are forced discards at the end of each turn.
So you might have a great hand that you're really happy with,
but by the end of that turn,
you're going to have to give one of those things up,
which can be just downright painful.
And of course, either your opponent,
if you're playing with another person or the AI,
if you're playing a solitaire game,
are going to, at the end of your turn,
at the beginning of their turn,
they're going to assault you with something.
Something evil is going to, this way, come.
It's a really, really complex game.
There's a lot of moving parts to it,
and a lot to kind of keep track of.
I mean, it's accounting.
It's an exercise in accounting.
It's what it is.
It's resource management,
which doesn't sound like a game at all,
but it is.
It is a game because it's cool stuff that you're getting to manage,
and it kind of keeps you on the edge of your seat.
I get really, really anxious while playing this game,
like way too anxious,
but it's that same kind of feeling,
you know, that you get when you're playing a game.
It's just like,
you don't want to have to face that next monster,
because your health isn't that great,
and you're not really feeling that confident in your attacks right now,
and then you draw a card that gives you a two bonus
on an ice plateau,
and you're on an ice plateau,
and you encounter the ice switch,
and it goes wonderful.
You kill her,
and it just feels amazing.
It feels absolutely like you are just the best,
you know, epic Viking warrior,
or half elf made,
whatever,
ever to live,
and it's a great feeling.
So it's a lot of fun.
It's a roller coaster,
but it is a lot of accounting just to warn you,
like if that's not your thing,
then Dungeon Year is not your game.
It's not the game that you want to go to.
There is a lot of stuff to keep track of.
There's your parallel and glory card,
and there's tokens on there to keep track of that,
and they're always going up and down,
because at the end of every turn,
you get points for being alive,
and then the next,
you know, and then the AI or your opponent
comes along and spins your parallel points
to throw a monster at you,
and then your health is being manipulated.
So you've got like this dice on your,
this die on your character card,
and you have to flip that over every time you get wounded,
because you're losing life points.
Yeah, it's a lot of stuff to manage.
You've got cards, you have to discard them,
and draw new ones,
and then you have to roll a die to see if the,
if the ice switches,
at least on the realm of the ice switch,
you have to roll to see if the,
if the land that you're on is going to get cursed
by the ice switch and get frozen.
So yeah, there's a lot of stuff.
And that is, I should mention here,
that part of the impressive,
the most impressive thing about the engineer in a way,
is its modularity.
It, like, it's got all those different flavors of decks
that you can get,
and all of them are, are combinable.
You can combine them all.
You can play them all separately,
which I've done with the realm of the ice switch.
That's, that's my, right now, my go-to implementation
of the engineer,
because that's the one that I got.
Again, I got used off of someone for like ten bucks,
it was pretty good purchase.
And then in addition, I've got this call of the,
no, two of them, the Litch Lord,
which I eventually will be able to combine with the ice realm
and play both in and out of dungeon.
So I'll have a dungeon, I'll have the ice realm.
So it's like, it's really kind of cool.
You can play, you can combine the decks and play, you know,
this big game with lots and lots of more quests
and different kinds of monsters
and different locations
and all these different forces acting against you.
It's, it's really, really neat.
And, I mean, to some degree,
the fact that they've got six different varieties, eight technically,
of decks, you might kind of just think,
well, that's, that's sort of franchising for the sake of franchising.
And it may be, you know, that's, that's fine.
But, but you can't really discount the,
or dismiss the, the, the, the fact that there is, you know,
the, the, the different flavors of the decks actually
are kind of part of what you're signing up for when you're playing a game, right?
I mean, part of the reason that we play a fantasy-based game
is because they appeal to fantasies.
So if you happen to be more inspired by a witch warrior
with fire spells than a woodland druid,
then it's actually really great to be able to choose one deck over the other
because you can kind of, you can pick the one that,
that just kind of speaks to you more,
which is, it's, it's, it's appreciated.
I, I didn't have that experience myself,
but I, I can see now that, I mean, when I bought it,
I didn't even know what I was buying, really.
So, but I can see how,
how having the different flavors actually is kind of nice.
And it is kind of cool.
And I do look forward to, you know,
actually breaking out my epic deck with its different types of warriors
because eventually maybe I'll want to play different kinds of characters
and certainly fight different kinds of enemies.
The different decks also do have like the,
they'll throw in one or two unique mechanics as well.
Like the, the woods of Malforin has a weather system
where you have to roll the dice to see what kind of weather is affecting
the card that you're on or something like that.
And the realm of the ice witch, as I said,
you roll a dice to see if the ice witch freezes the land,
the, the space that you're on.
And if, if she does, then certain monsters,
and even some of your own weapons sometimes ideally get boosted in,
in, in power, you know, if the monster attacks you on ice,
then they have a plus one to whatever.
Or if you use an ice blade on ice,
then you get a plus one or four,
or something like that and just off the top of my head.
So, so it's not just a theme, you know, a skin.
It's, it's, it does have some, some unique,
unique things in there as well.
And yeah, it's, it's,
it's a lot of fun because when you combine the dice,
or the, the decks rather you, you also get to then expand,
you know, you get more variety in your map,
essentially.
I mean, again, it's a fantasy game.
Part of the thing that you're signing up for is,
is the world that, that's being built, you know,
like this different fantasy world.
So the fact that you're, you're spinning an entire game on the,
in the ice, wastelands is fine for a while,
but eventually maybe you want to mix something in there.
You want to get some woodlands in there.
You want to get some dungeons in there, whatever.
You can buy a new deck.
You can throw them into your map and play this sort of mega,
you know, a bunch of engineering game with, you know,
500 cards to choose from,
a map to that go in and out of dungeons.
You can just kind of play it any way you want.
Really, it's, it's, it's pretty cool.
It's a pretty nice design.
And don't I always say modularity is good.
Once more, I am not wrong.
So that's, yeah, that's the, the cards, I guess.
And, and fantasy is a fun game in terms of sort of escapism.
It's, it's kind of a good setting, a good genre, I guess.
And, and dungeoner takes advantage of that in all senses of the,
of the cards, like the artwork is beautiful.
Like if, if, if you're in, if you're into sort of cards as,
you know, cards, which, which I am back when I was introduced to magic
of a long time ago in the States, I, I never got into it,
but I, I really did appreciate it.
If no other reason than for the, the artwork, you know,
and for the ideas that it was presenting me with.
And that's the cool thing about the engineers that it's got,
first of all, great art, but it's also got,
I mean, between just the six standard decks again,
excluding the, the advanced ones,
you've got all kinds of characters to choose from.
You've got gnomes, dwarves, orcs, dark elves, dark wings,
humans, a centaur, necromancers.
Yeah, you've just, you've got all manner of different heroes to choose from.
Granted, like a lot of their powers are, you know,
they, they start to become a little bit redundant after a while,
but, but again, it's not necessarily just a num, a game of numbers.
It's also what speaks to you as a, as a player and as a kind of a person,
a fan of, of, of the fantasy genre.
Now, the game as designed is meant to be multiplayer,
with each player attempting to complete two quests for anyone else does.
And at the same time, each player also gets a turn as the,
what, what's called the dungeon lord,
and that's where they try to play against one of the other people
as, as sort of playing as the dungeon almost.
And that's kind of, that's very sort of darker cult,
or dark, dark cult slash gloom, kind of like,
you're not only playing as yourself,
but you're playing as, as everyone else is, nemesis,
whereas you're not really, you're not necessarily,
like, directly playing against the character,
but you're, you're taking on the environment and,
and bringing bad things upon other players.
It's kind of an indirect, you know,
kind of a passive aggressive, aggressive.
And it's, that, that works, just fine.
And I'm not really sure that I love that model.
I mean, I think it's brilliant and dark cults.
I think it's brilliant and gloom.
And I find that for an RPG mechanic
and an RPG feeling game,
I mean, RPGs, if you think about it, are usually cooperative,
you know, like, it's, it's usually a game
where everyone's in a party together,
and they're up against whatever foe the game master,
the dungeon master has invented for them to go up against.
I don't really think of RPG in my mind as a,
as a thing where you're all playing against one another.
So to me, that feels kind of out of place in this game.
However, there are, there are variants, of course,
as they're often are with tabletop games,
for both solitaire and essentially a cooperative model,
which the cooperative really ultimately is basically,
you know, two or more people playing a solo game together,
like at the same time.
That's, that's mostly what it boils down to,
because most of the mechanics are pretty much the same.
You can, you can refine it a little bit to,
to encourage co-op for a tiveness,
like, you know, being able to switch to, to take,
not, not necessarily take turns in sequence,
you know, and kind of like,
add stain from one of your moves,
let another character take their move,
and then you go, you know, kind of stagger it or whatever.
But yeah, I find that cooperative play for RPG,
at least in my mind, just sort of feels more natural.
And, and that is again,
that's, that's essentially a solitaire game
with, with more than one person.
So the solitaire game is, is,
it works brilliantly.
It's, it's, all it does is,
it splits out the, the evil cards into its own deck.
And, after your normal turn,
which is a little bit,
there are some modifications to a turn,
there has to be an escape mechanic, for instance.
But, after your turn,
you can, or you, you then draw,
as many evil cards as you have,
got parallel points for,
which is what an opponent would do for you anyway.
So you draw the evil cards,
and then those monsters exist in the,
in your current space,
and you have to fight them.
And, since that is a thing,
now you, you, you know,
it would either be, well,
you either fight them and you die,
or you fight them and you win.
So there's also an escape mechanic,
so that you can face a monster,
and then try to just run away.
There's a cost for running away,
you have to roll for it,
and it's a pretty steep test to,
to overcome.
But, at least the option is there,
and it, and it turns it into a little bit more of a dynamic leg.
You know, otherwise there's,
there's a certain look of the draw going on,
it's just, if you,
if a, if a monster,
that's just,
there's no way you're ever going to beat it.
If that appears,
then you're,
you're probably just sort of,
the game's over, essentially.
So the escape mechanic gives you a fighting chance at,
at turning tail and running, really.
But then those monsters stay in that space,
like in a normal,
in a normal game,
a non-cooperative,
non-solitaire game,
the monsters would,
would return to the opponent's hand,
and that space would be empty.
But in the solo and the cooperative play,
the, the monsters stay in that space.
So that kind of ups the risk,
because now you're traveling through spaces that also have monsters in them,
potentially.
So the combat I would say is a lot more fierce in the solo game.
And I guess the,
the good thing about a solo game is that you can always adjust it.
You know, if you're just like,
well, this is impossible.
This is stupid.
You can,
you can make adjustments.
And I'm still,
I feel like I'm still getting the mix right.
I haven't perfected that yet.
Like some games all go through and just think,
oh, this is way too easy.
And then other games all go through and just think,
wow, this is impossible.
So I think there's a little bit of refinement there,
but, but overall,
it's a, it's a really fun solo game,
because as I have said from the beginning,
there's, there's no story.
So, so you don't have to worry about the logistics of,
well, where's the story coming from?
Because the story's built in.
You get some quest cards.
If you want to take the time to imagine how that quest has been given,
and who gave it to you,
you can do that.
But it's not necessary.
You can just take it as,
as you would in a video game, you know,
just like, okay,
here's my quest.
I'm blindly accepting it.
I'm going to go do this thing.
And then when you achieve that quest,
you usually get some kind of,
well, you always get some kind of bonus.
Sometimes you level up,
which feels fantastic.
Sometimes you just get, you know,
some, some more,
more life restored,
or, or,
or you get the power to dissolve ice.
So you can go back through your map,
dissolving ice,
where the ice switch has,
has otherwise frozen the land,
you know, whatever,
you, you get some kind of reward.
So that's,
that feels pretty good.
And in the solo game,
I usually,
I assign myself two quests,
and I go complete them,
and then I,
I try to make sure that I get back to the entrance
and stay alive,
because presumably,
if you're hero,
doesn't get out alive,
and you haven't really won the game.
So I kind of imposed that on the solo game.
In the addition to the constant third of monsters,
of course, you are still,
forced to discard a card at the end of each turn,
so you still have,
kind of,
that to manage.
You've still got your glory points to manage.
So the pace remains quite rigorous,
and,
and as I've said,
sometimes,
the combat is just,
just fierce.
It's just,
it's, it gets to be,
really quite amazing.
So yeah,
highly highly recommend this game,
especially, as I've said,
if you like,
the RPG mechanics.
I mean, that's,
that's a great reason to play this thing.
If you want to play an RPG game,
but don't have an RPG group,
or you don't feel like you have a story available to you
to, to kind of play through solo,
the engineer is a fantastic way to go.
Highly highly recommended.
Of course, I'd be remiss if I,
if I left it on that,
on that note,
because there is,
there is a problem with engineer.
And the problem are the rules.
Not really the rules themselves,
the rules are actually fine.
It's, it's the way that the rules are written and presented.
I've never,
ever,
ever seen game rules written so poorly,
as I have with the engineer.
They, they periodically update the rules on,
on the Atlas Games website,
and they're still horribly written.
I mean, it is,
it is phenomenal how badly these things are written, honestly.
I, I spent at least two weeks trying to really figure out the rules.
Like, I read the rules,
I read the rule updates online,
I read through forums,
I watched some play through online.
Like, it was, it was amazing how complex these rules are.
And it's not really that they're complex.
It's just that when you're reading them,
that there's just no logic there.
It's, it's just,
it makes no sense.
And, and to make things worse.
Well, yeah, I mean, the game,
the rules basically just lay it out for you.
It tells you everything,
but in no particular order,
and without any context.
So it's, it's like they just dumped a bunch of rules on a page,
and just, they're just handing it to you.
And they're like,
here, make a game out of these.
Why don't you?
You know, it's just like,
okay, you want to give me a hint?
As to how I'm supposed to do that?
No, they don't want to.
The cards also have a lot of iconography on them.
There's a lot of little symbols,
and little numbers,
and they sometimes speak sort of,
you know,
some English words,
some icons,
so they're like,
you know,
roll on icon,
plus two,
if trapped plus five,
and you're just like,
what are you, is that?
Which ones are the nouns,
and which ones are the verbs?
I mean, really, it's,
it's horrific,
it's horrible,
horribly done.
And, and,
if I'm honest,
there are still symbols on some of the cards that I,
I have no clue what they mean.
I cannot find any sign
in anything written,
what they mean.
There's, there's one card specifically in,
in the ice deck,
there's this,
a letter D,
Delta,
in a circle,
in the middle of the card,
smack dab in the middle of the card.
There is no clue anywhere
as to what that means.
I, I've seen a suggestion on the internet
that it is some kind of sewer,
so you can travel from like,
one,
one D card to another D card,
but I have no basis for that.
I don't actually know that.
I don't know how many moves that
are supposed to require,
and it's just,
it's completely,
it's a mystery.
So,
it's a little bit upsetting.
I've also got another idea that maybe that's an
entrance to a dungeon,
you know, so like,
maybe if you're playing a combined deck
with dungeons,
then you could get into the dungeon
from the,
from the sewer,
essentially.
So yeah, I really don't know,
and there's, there's text all over the cards,
and then the rules talk about things that they don't,
like that they use different terms
within its own rule set.
Like, it'll call,
it'll call an encounter card
an adventure card.
It'll call life points
a wound.
You, you, you inflict a wound.
What is a wound?
What does that mean?
Do I get a token for that?
Like, how do I indicate that?
No, it just means
decrement your life,
your life point,
your, your health points.
Um, it's just,
it's horrible.
It's horrific.
I cannot emphasize this enough.
And the reason I need to emphasize it is
because it will scare you away from the game.
It will, it will discourage you from playing the game.
And that, that would be a pity,
because as I've said,
um, for this entire time,
it's a lot of fun.
So to that end,
I have reorganized and, um,
rewritten.
I didn't modify.
I just wrote for clarity,
uh, the rules,
again.
So both from multiplayer and for solo.
And again, I,
I, I frankly recommend solo play.
Uh, and if you have more than one person,
just play co-op,
play solo together.
Um, you can find my rewrite
at GitLab.com slash not
quite too slash dungeonier fix.
Again, it's not,
it's not,
it's not a mod.
It's not a variant.
Uh, it's just a rewrite of the rules.
And even the solo version is not really,
it's not mine.
It's, it's,
it's the solo version that combines the,
uh, a variant that Atlas games came up with
and the variant that, um,
two variants that some people on board game geek.com came up with.
So it's,
nothing that I've done other than I've,
I've organized it into reference sheets online.
Um,
and certainly the,
the rules themselves,
like the multiplayer rules,
that is something that I did.
That's just completely.
That's a rewrite for normal human beings.
Um, it's,
it, the rules are just,
so badly written.
Do not look at them.
Don't refer to them.
Don't ever look at them.
Use mine instead.
I guarantee you they make sense.
The Atlas game rules will only confuse you.
And probably discourage you from even.
Bothering with the game at all.
Otherwise outside of the rules.
As they're written.
The game is a lot of fun.
If you have any interest in kind of like that hardcore dungeon crawling RPG feel.
You should definitely try this game.
It's a lot of fun.
Beautifully implemented.
And supremely, supremely geeky.
If you like resource management.
Disguised as fantasy game.
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