Game Review: Dungeon WC

[Black_Wolf]

When it comes to theme board games have covered just about everything, or at least I had thought they had.

Then I got my hands on Dungeon WC.

The WC here stands for water closet a rather antiquated name for a toilet.
Yes this is a little dungeon crawler where you must get your hero through the dungeon to the water closet in time.

But, therein lies the true challenge of the game, Dungeon WC is a real time, game.
You have to play out tiles, deal with monsters, explore treasure chests, and all the while sand runs through a tiny egg timer. If the sands run out you lose.

The game from designer by Dario Dordoni and Dracomaca Games is a cooperative one for one-to-five players working together as quickly as possible to move the hero along.

The game is essentially a card game where the players try to connect dungeon cards to bring the Hero to the bathroom before time ends.

While the time is short in the timer, there are ways to flip it over just before the final grains fall, to essentially restart the timer. You can pay gold, although there is never enough gold in any world is there?

Or, you can find a treasure card that lets you flip it, although not always at the most opportune time.

There are some neat features incorporated into this small, quick game.

One aspect requires you to flip tokens in a particular order to progress. That means having a good memory, but it is co-operative so fellow players can help.

Defeating monsters is a dice roll, which is terms of a battle makes some sense, as a sword fight often has an element of luck.

Overall, this is a game that surprised me in terms of how much fun it was. I was not sure what the timer element would be like, it's the only game in the collection with time a major element, but it works here, in part keeping games short enough that the fun of the game is maintained.

Dungeon WC is not a play all evening game, but it works as a quick filler with different mechanics to make it interesting.

Check it out at www.xvgames.it

Thanks to fellow gamers Trevor Lyons and Adam Daniels for their help in running through this game for review.