Most games center around who wins. This game centers around who can suffer the most terrible fate.

This is Dungeon Quest, and it hates your guts.

You are an adventurer come to the ruins of Castle Dragonfire, to battle the beasts and traps therein for the sake of fortune and glory. Mostly fortune, as the castle is rumored to house a massive hoard of dragon loot!

It also houses a dragon, who sleeps on the loot. Also, much like a Spirit Halloween shop, these ruins are open for a very limited time, and when they close, you’d better not still be inside…because it doesn’t open again for a long, long time. If ever.

This game is very fun, and very easy to get into, but you have to approach with the correct mindset. This isn’t a game about winning, it’s a game where you laugh about falling into a bottomless pit on your first turn, or stumbling in aimless circles until time runs out, or having your torch go out one step away from victory, and still struggling to re-light it as the castle gate shuts you in forever.

Gameplay is very simple. You choose a direction and move onto that square. If there isn’t a room tile on said square, draw one and place it under your dude with the arrow indicating which way you entered from. Resolve anything the room throws at you if it’s a special room, like a Cave-In or a Trap; otherwise draw a Room Card and see if it’s empty, or if it contains a dead adventurer to loot, or a crypt to examine, or a monster itchin’ to get stabbin’. Instead of moving you can opt to search your current room for secret doors or loot dropped by other, much deader adventurers than you.

Essentially the players are building the labyrinth as they progress, hopefully creating a path to the Treasure Chamber at its center. But the clock is ticking: at the start of each new round, the sun moves through the sky to indicate the passage of time…time which you haven’t got!

The labyrinth, though, has all the time in the world to mess with you. Poison gas slows you down, orcs and skeletons chip away at your health, and twisting tunnels lead you in circles. You only get one move per turn, so you really feel the passage of time, and it’s hair-pulling to say the least. You’ll soon find yourself counting how many rounds are left on the game’s Sun Track and using that to calculate how many spaces left to the Treasure Chamber, and how many turns it will take to reach the nearest exit afterward. And it won’t be as simple as retracing your steps, either! You may enter a room that’s been split in half by a chasm, forcing you in a direction you don’t want; or step through a door only for a portcullis to drop behind you, cutting off your way back and forcing you to improvise a new way out.

This game has had many editions released over the years, which should give you some idea what a classic it is. I made a point to get the original 1985 edition (though there are older versions in Swedish) because I think it has the best art direction: every deck of cards is uniquely shaped and bursting with personality. All characters in the game have their own signature combat tokens, too, which is totally unnecessary, but a nice touch that completes the game’s theme.

The combat itself is a mixed bag. First you decide if you will fight, flee, or see what happens; then one of your opponents draws a Monster Card and reads how the particular monster you’ve encountered responds to your action. They might take off running like cowards and relieve you of an unnecessary bloodshed; or they might take a free stab at you before the real fight begins!

Once combat commences, it basically plays out like rock-paper-scissors: both parties choose whether to Slash, Leap Aside, or Mighty Blow, and consult the chart on the game board to determine what the result is. I suppose it’s a nice change of pace from rolling lots and lots of dice.

I do have a bone to pick with the miniatures though. Three of the four basically match the likenesses of the heroes, but the one with the axe and horned helmet does not resemble the big, dumb barbarian on the portrait. Like, at all. I would’ve much preferred cardboard standees of the hero art to keep it consistent, and might even make some myself one of these days.

So the game boils down to “move to next room”, “place a tile”, “get hurt”, & “search for goodies”. If you manage to reach the Treasure Hoard, you’re one of the lucky few, as many heroes cut their losses and make tracks back to the exit before time runs out, or get killed by undead warriors & giant spiders before they get halfway.

The Treasure Chamber provides the ultimate test: grabbing as much loot as you can without waking the sleeping dragon, and beating feet back the way you came (or to whatever exit has a safe, open path at the time). All you have to do is draw 2 random treasures from the bag (and hope they’re valuable enough to be worth all the trouble), then pick a Dragon token and hope he don’t wake up! If he does, you lose all treasure and basically die.

If fortune favors you, the brute’s still asleep. Maybe you can grab another armful of treasure if your first grab was a pittance, but you have to wait ’til next turn to do so, and there’ll be 1 fewer Dragon token in the pile to draw from…and 1 less round to spend getting back to the exit. Maybe you don’t have time for more than one scoop and have to get moving before time runs out. Or worse, maybe the other heroes got here before you, and were luckier than you, and now there’s only three or four Dragon tokens to draw from!

I can’t recommend this game enough. It’s a blast, if you go in with the expectation that terrible, horrible, no good, very bad things will happen to you, and the chances of anyone getting out alive are slim to none. If it’s your group’s first time playing, you might consider removing the “bottomless pit” tiles for your first game, since they make it possible to lose the game on Turn 1, which is a bit of a downer. Otherwise you’ll have many nights of hilarious stories about how you almost got out of Castle Dragonfire, if only your blasted torch hadn’t gone out two steps from salvation. I don’t think it matters which version you get, though I can’t attest to the quality of the most recent release, nor would I be surprised if it nerfs the cruelty streak of the game and lets everyone win. And that’s no fun.

Time for bed. Uncle Mac out.