When I went to PAX South earlier this year, a bunch of my little brothers came with me since it was so close to home. While at the PAX show, one of my brothers (Jeff) showed interest in Guild of Dungeoneering, a game that they previewed there. So now that the game is out, I decided to have Jeff take a shot at reviewing it, since he took a liking to it before. My brothers may have different tastes in games than I do, but they still have good tastes in games regardless, so I highly recommend checking out his review by clicking here!

Guild of Dungeoneering is a turn-based dungeon crawler/puzzle card game where you play both a shrewd and greedy new guild owner and the dungeons that your new guild members run through. You play by sending off you guild members to dungeons to hopefully bring back gold to expand the guild. By expanding you can acquire new classes of guild members as well as special items to help them in battle.

The interesting thing about Guild of Dungeoneering is that when you send your hero to these dungeons you have to guide them through a dungeon that you make yourself. You draw cards from an unseen deck that can either be new rooms so your dungeoneer can progress, monsters that can be battled for treasure and experience, or cards that can place treasure in the dungeon. You have to place these carefully because you don’t directly control your character. He or she will go toward treasure and battles so you have to make sure to think carefully about where you are placing your cards so you don’t lead your hero to monsters that are too high level or so they can make it to a certain room in time to complete a mission.

Battles turn into a card game between you and the monster you’re fighting as you draw cards based on both your hero’s class and the equipment they have picked up from other monsters. The card game itself is simple enough but it does take a few battles to really pick it up. Cards can either let you attack physically or magically as well as block or allow you to draw extra cards or heal. You can usually see the card your opponent is about to play so you can counter it but some enemies have special abilities that can hide their card or increase the strength of their attacks. The only thing that may have battles being a little harder than they should be is that luck can play a huge role in how a battle goes.

Overall, Guild of Dungeoneering can be a bit confusing at first, but once you understand the mechanics it is a great game to pick up and play in a relaxing atmosphere.

Kid Factor:

There is little violence aside from monsters or your hero ripping apart when they die due to the paper aesthetic of the game. Some of the attacks you can do are a bit weird such as the Cat Burglar throwing cats but it is all text. There are a few jokes that may be considered crude but for the most part the gags are just your adventurers commenting on what monster they’re about to destroy or drooling over treasure. –Jeff Orth

Tags: Reader Reviews!