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solo_knightUnreview: Four Against Darkness
What is it?
An old-school lite Dungeon Crawler. You can play one of seven races/classes, and you can never be an elf wizard, just either one or the other.
Is it playable out of the box?
For someone else, maybe. I found a lot of the language confusing (what is an adventure? What is a game? Neither is defined, yet some abilities are limited by these terms, and they’re not the same) there is a lot – A LOT – of number crunching, and I was thoroughly bored before I got to the entrance of the first dungeon.
You’re running four character to get a variety of skills (fair enough), and because ‘four characters are not too difficult to control for a single player’ And… maybe? For someone who isn’t well versed in Old School Gaming, who doesn’t like to crunch numbers and keep in mind that this character rolls 3d6 and adds their whole level to a roll while that one rolls 1d6 and adds half their level unless they’re fighting undead… you need a cheat sheet for this game. You really do, at least I would.
Amendments:
A whole other game to go with the dungeon creation. If you enjoy the dungeon creation. Given that the second room of the dungeon I tried contained 3 5th-level trolls, I think the basic idea of having pre-formed dungeon components is fine, but the tables don’t work for me. You can stack the dice a bit so you actually could survive this, if you have a hard-hitting warrior who rolls well. If you’re unlucky, you can meet the end boss in Room 1.
Tools
Multiple d6. You roll on 2d6 tables for the dungeon, so you want two different-looking d6; you roll with exploding dice so in theory you want an unlimited number of d6.
As an aside, I found it irritating to roll on a ‘first number/second number’ table one moment (so 4+1 = 41) and an ‘add up’ table the next (4+1 = 5)
Price:
($12)
Verdict
🧮 Too many numbers,
🪫 What are words even?
🥾 I was not having the slightest shred of fun
So yes, this is a straight Dungeon Delve – you construct the dungeon from pre-formed tiles, depending on a dice roll – and then you determine what you meet. You resolve the conflict, you get treasure, and you move on until you either die or beat the big boss.
On paper, this was exactly what I thought I wanted, a basic dungeon crawl, no story, just orc-bothering and grabbing treasure.
In reality, I hated it, and I did not get to the point where I felt I could play. The question now is whether this is just a game that’s diametrically opposite to what I like, or whether I was wrong about the kind of game I want to play and should be looking in a completely different direction.
Either way, this does not spark joy for me. (Plenty of people think this is easy to learn and lots of fun. Different strokes for different folks and all that.)
There is always a question of how much time you can and want to invest in learning a new thing. And that’s a complex matrix (I might talk about that more on my main journal if I can gather my thoughts). Right now, with a ton of games to look at and play I’m making ‘does this spark joy’ a major part of my choices. I did not enjoy this game, I did not enjoy the (very brief) playthrough I’ve seen from other people.
There are no right or wrong choices here, and it’s impossible to say whether I’d have the time of my life if I invested more energy into learning this thing, but as stated before, I have *so many* games, and right now, I’m going for easy wins, for games I pick up and love instead of ones that feel like hard work.
Some of the games that are work are things I may play later. Some of them are things I will never get around to, and that’s ok. In the meantime, I have a DnD session to prepare forcaper_est and a couple more characters to prepare for a Tiny Dungeon Crawl, and a lot more games to evaluate; I don’t have the spoons for this one.
What is it?
An old-school lite Dungeon Crawler. You can play one of seven races/classes, and you can never be an elf wizard, just either one or the other.
Is it playable out of the box?
For someone else, maybe. I found a lot of the language confusing (what is an adventure? What is a game? Neither is defined, yet some abilities are limited by these terms, and they’re not the same) there is a lot – A LOT – of number crunching, and I was thoroughly bored before I got to the entrance of the first dungeon.
You’re running four character to get a variety of skills (fair enough), and because ‘four characters are not too difficult to control for a single player’ And… maybe? For someone who isn’t well versed in Old School Gaming, who doesn’t like to crunch numbers and keep in mind that this character rolls 3d6 and adds their whole level to a roll while that one rolls 1d6 and adds half their level unless they’re fighting undead… you need a cheat sheet for this game. You really do, at least I would.
Amendments:
A whole other game to go with the dungeon creation. If you enjoy the dungeon creation. Given that the second room of the dungeon I tried contained 3 5th-level trolls, I think the basic idea of having pre-formed dungeon components is fine, but the tables don’t work for me. You can stack the dice a bit so you actually could survive this, if you have a hard-hitting warrior who rolls well. If you’re unlucky, you can meet the end boss in Room 1.
Tools
Multiple d6. You roll on 2d6 tables for the dungeon, so you want two different-looking d6; you roll with exploding dice so in theory you want an unlimited number of d6.
As an aside, I found it irritating to roll on a ‘first number/second number’ table one moment (so 4+1 = 41) and an ‘add up’ table the next (4+1 = 5)
Price:
($12)
Verdict
🧮 Too many numbers,
🪫 What are words even?
🥾 I was not having the slightest shred of fun
So yes, this is a straight Dungeon Delve – you construct the dungeon from pre-formed tiles, depending on a dice roll – and then you determine what you meet. You resolve the conflict, you get treasure, and you move on until you either die or beat the big boss.
On paper, this was exactly what I thought I wanted, a basic dungeon crawl, no story, just orc-bothering and grabbing treasure.
In reality, I hated it, and I did not get to the point where I felt I could play. The question now is whether this is just a game that’s diametrically opposite to what I like, or whether I was wrong about the kind of game I want to play and should be looking in a completely different direction.
Either way, this does not spark joy for me. (Plenty of people think this is easy to learn and lots of fun. Different strokes for different folks and all that.)
There is always a question of how much time you can and want to invest in learning a new thing. And that’s a complex matrix (I might talk about that more on my main journal if I can gather my thoughts). Right now, with a ton of games to look at and play I’m making ‘does this spark joy’ a major part of my choices. I did not enjoy this game, I did not enjoy the (very brief) playthrough I’ve seen from other people.
There are no right or wrong choices here, and it’s impossible to say whether I’d have the time of my life if I invested more energy into learning this thing, but as stated before, I have *so many* games, and right now, I’m going for easy wins, for games I pick up and love instead of ones that feel like hard work.
Some of the games that are work are things I may play later. Some of them are things I will never get around to, and that’s ok. In the meantime, I have a DnD session to prepare for
caper_est and a couple more characters to prepare for a Tiny Dungeon Crawl, and a lot more games to evaluate; I don’t have the spoons for this one.
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Date: 2025-10-30 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-11-08 08:34 pm (UTC)