Lunch time solo

Lunch today involves a spot of dungeon crawling with the solo game that is Traumatarium Deckulus. Designed by Horatiu Radoiu, Deckulus aims to take the spirit of a dungeon crawler and distill it into a deck of cards – so does it make for a satisfying meal? 

How it plays

Set up couldn’t be simpler, though you do need at a D6 and something to mark typical  adventure things like HP, and items.  Take the deck out of the box, choose a hero, and at least one of the boss characters. You can choose both if you want a more difficult game.

Shuffle the deck then add the boss and shuffle again, thus randomising where the boss will be. Now set it face down.  Set your hero to one side giving it 20HP and one of each item.  That’s it, you’re ready to go. Play simply requires you to turn over the next card from the deck and react to it.  There are two types of cards – ones that act as the dungeon providing typical things like traps, chests, and potential supplies. The other are monsters that need other be dealt with. 

Fighting is simply – each monster has a damage level which is the number you must roll higher than to do damage,  a strength level which is the damage it will inflict on you, and a health level which you have to reduce to zero.  Each time you successfully roll, you remove one health though if you have a bomb in your items you can use that to do additional one-off damage.

As long as you’re alive, you keep turning cards until you either die or encounter  the boss. Once encountered you fight, defeat the boss you win. 

Good for lunch? 
You might be thinking that it could soon gets tiresome to turn over the same cards game after game, but if you are then I am afraid you’re wrong. Sure if you’re a full on rpg dungeon crawler fan then you’re probably not going to play this everyday but for a lunchtime gaming fill, it is a real blast. The randomness of the shuffling means you never know when the boss is going to appear, and equally the shuffling creates a different dungeon crawl each time.   The artwork on the cards is amazing.

Each card adding to the story and managing to portray exactly what you’re up against.  Additionally,  the overall black design and the slightly worn aesthetic given to each card evokes, for me, the feeling of wandering through a dark, cobwebby dungeon. In the kickstarter campaign the designer stated he wanted to crate a game that was  “super quickly play solo with cards that I would want to collect”. He’s certainly achieved that! 

Land of Amazement is the latest Scott Almes solo game published by Button Shy. In keeping with their games that means it’s an 18 card game which neatly fits into a wallet. In Land of Amazement you take on the role of an amusement park designer trying to build up your portfolio of work.

How it plays

Gameplay is divided into two phases both of which involve placing and moving cards to build ‘parks’. Set up, as one would expect from a wallet game, is swift. Take the three megapark cards and choose one at random. Then take the deck of park cards and shuffle them. Deal four to make a starting hand, place one at the top of the megacard and the rest divide into three piles. Phase one of the games requires you create smaller parks, the design of which appears at the top of each card in the piles. You do this by turning over each card from your hand, in turn, and assigning it to one of the parks. You can choose either of the building blocks on a card and rotate it how you wish to try and create the park pattern. It doesn’t have to be exact (as in the example below) but if it is you gain the ability in the top right of the card.

You then move all the cards to the discard pile, which reveals the next park in the stack. When you have no more cards in your hand, the round ends, now you must ‘reserve’ one card for the megapark – in the card below round 1 would require you to reserve a card with a purple icon, round 2 green and so on. Phase one of the game continues until all the rounds on the megapark are covered then it’s time for phase 2.

In the second phase you use the reserved cards and try and manipulate them to create the megapark plan. Once you’ve given that your best shot you score points according to how well the plan has been completed. Points are penalties such as not having all the squares or missing icons. As such a perfect score would be zero.

Good for lunch?

As you would expect from a button shy game, set up and play is quick and easy with a game falling into that sweet spot of around 10 minutes. As other reviews on the site would support, I do like a puzzle game but for me, I found the game a bit fiddly. While  the puzzle is mildly engaging, the fiddliness holds it back from being truly satisfying. I feel that having two phases actually takes away from my enjoyment, it’s quite fun trying to remove cards from the stacks but then I almost have to restart to achieve the megaplan, and since with this I have to use all the cards it can become quite tiresome. It’s not bad by any means, but it also doesn’t leave a strong impression or a strong urge to replay. If you enjoy tiny solo games you may find it a pleasant diversion for a couple of plays but it is likely to remain just that: pleasant, and nothing more.