By MICHAEL ERB
www.newsandsentinel.com

“Dungeon Twister” by Asmodee Editions is a two-player dungeon crawl and competition where teams of fantasy characters attempt to escape from a mad wizard’s dungeon while fighting one another and braving deadly traps.

The board is made up of eight modular tiles that are played face down, so each section of the dungeon and its traps don’t become obvious until a character steps into that room.

There are six character archetypes, each with their own special ability. They range from the wall-walker who can move through walls as though they were doorways, to the thief who can find and disable traps and locks, to the cleric who can heal other characters, to the troll who can heal himself. The goblin is in his own way the most interesting, as he has no special ability but is worth twice the number of victory points if he makes it out of the dungeon alive. And the meek shall inherit the earth.

There also are special items that can be discovered and used throughout the game, such as the sword which adds to attacks, armor which reduces damage from attacks, potions, spells and the rope, which allows you to navigate over pit traps.

Pit traps and portcullises are among the “natural” dangers of the dungeon. Pits damage and delay characters while portcullises can be opened, closed or destroyed to prevent or grant access to different hallways. Several of the characters have specific abilities that allow them to navigate or disable these traps.

Characters use Action Points (AP) to move, attack, use items or activate special abilities. Each player has a deck of cards that include actions, attacks and jumps (which can be used to avoid pit traps). The decks are the same, but each player has a deck. Each Action Point card has from 2-5 APs. In round one you are limited to playing a 2-AP card, the next round 3-AP card or less, and so on until you play a 5-AP card, at which point any value AP card can be played (from whatever you have left, that is). This prevents the starting player from gaining too much of an advantage early on, or burning through their highest-value action cards right out of the gate (why else would you play the smaller cards?)

The game board is made up of two starting strips (one for each player) and eight tiles laid face down between the two. This creates two rows of four tiles that run between the two players. As new areas of the board are entered, the tile is flipped, revealing the traps and doorways and the tile’s turning gear. The trick is to make it from one end of the board to the other, with of course your opponents trying to do likewise and willing to go through your people to get to their goal. You receive a point for each character that makes it out alive, with of course the goblin being worth more due to his special ability.

One of the interesting tricks of the game and its namesake is the ability of characters to rotate sections of the dungeon. This allows players in mid-game to cut off some exits, open up new pathways and generally screw with their opponent. On each tile there is a gear space where a character can stand and use actions to move the tile. The gear space shows what direction you can turn the tile as well as the number of action points necessary to make the turn. One character, the mekanork, has a special ability that allows the player greater control over how many turns and what direction a tile can be moved.

One of my few gripes with the game is the characters, or more specifically that the characters on both sides are the same. The blue team and the yellow team have the same choices of characters, from the archetypes to the artwork on the token. Though this simplifies things in that no one character is going to give one side a distinct advantage, I don’t see why the character portraits for the Blue Thief couldn’t be different than the Yellow Thief and on down the line.

The only other complaint I have is with the theme, and this is a pretty minor gripe that can be easily ignored. The main storyline is a bored, mega-powerful sorcerer who is kidnapping people and forcing them to fight for their lives against one another in a trap-filled dungeon for his own sick amusement. That ain’t fun for me. In fact, it reminds me a little too much of a lot of modern horror movies and it’s a theme I’m just not that comfortable with. Again, this is pretty minor, and most players aren’t going to give it a second thought, but I am afraid that putting such a harsh storyline to an otherwise cool fantasy game will chase off some people who want more fantasy and less of a feeling of hopelessness.

Still, “Dungeon Twister” is a very cool two-player game, and the pros definitely outweigh the cons. The modular board is cool and adds variety to the games, the characters are interesting and have distinct in-game abilities, and the rules are simple yet fit the dungeon crawl competition very well. Overall I would give this game high marks with a few caveats for players like me who think a little too much about the story instead of just enjoying the game.

For more information on “Dungeon Twister” and other Asmodee Editions products, visit www.asmodee-us.com ( www.asmodee.com takes you to the French site), and for more game reviews and discussion, visit my blog at http://merb101.livejournal.com.

Edit: A review copy of the game was provided for this article.