"The living dug out cities for their dead: necropolises deep within the earth. They filled the caverns with bodies and locked them away from the upper air. Eventually the dead forgot the living — if any remain.
But in death, a new life began. The breath of evil from the darkness of complete shadow stirred corrupted flesh. In their middens and pits, the dead awakened, swarming through slime-fluxing tunnels, seeking chthonic power, warring with demons and denizens of the deep. Animated by the black flame, necro-ecologies rose and collapsed in the crypt-universe. Now, cloistered undead lich-wizards have discovered the primordial opening to the shadow source, the doleful horror-hole where the Eternal Evil Emperor watches and waits....
The necromancers have dug their Lairs deep into the ground. They must gather precious resources and body parts to assemble an army of minions, while defending their own lairs from the excavations and intrusions of others. In the end, the only route is into the demon path...
Then depletion of your essence leads to spending another eternity in foul sepulchral darkness awaiting the next Awakening of Death."
In Cave Evil, each player takes the role of an ancient Necromancer. Located deep within an earth, their Necropolises have now merged, each seeking the Darkest Pit, the location of all evil. The dark wizards must build minions with precious resources from their Lairs to send forth and destroy, or dig further tunnels to locate other creatures, resources or to ambush another sorcerer.
The game is won when only one remaining Necromancer stands. A Necromancer can either be destroyed by combat, or an enemy minion may venture into their Lair and crush the wizard's shadow power, a Chthonic Crystal. BUT an even greater darkness may befall the players. As they build and destroy creatures the Dark Pit absorbs the shadowflame and may awaken the ultimate cave evil...
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- I know it has its own little like um uh you know sub cult of people who enjoy it.
- I don't particularly like it because I think it has a very strong rich get richer.
- If you start winning an Outpost you were going to continue winning because if your engine gets going faster than mine there's not much I can do about it.
- But yeah this one does not This one is one I wanted to like a lot more than I did.
- it's a good back and forth two-player game.
- I like the theme of it a lot. Seems like most music games I play aren't very good.
- I I find this one amusing.
- It almost feels like you could play it randomly and have the same amount of fun, but it's a nice way to pass some time.
- It's a great little filler.
- I don't think a lot of people have played this one.
- It was replaced by Nobody is Perfect, too, because they didn't get it right the first time.
- This is what a lot of people were talking about.
- It was one of those games that I saw a little bit of buzz and I was like, "Ooh, I'll have to play that sometime." and then never heard anything else about it.
- I think that's just a really solid two-player game from Catalia.
References (from this video)
- Unique and striking black metal aesthetic
- Hundreds of unique, grotesque art pieces on cards
- Fun and over-the-top horror themes
- Opens eyes to a subculture of board games (wargames)
- Can be overwhelming with lots of cardboard pieces to punch out.
- Associated with the 'portfolio game' style which can be niche.
- Black metal, evil wizards, summoning evil forces, necromancers
- A cave
- Brutal Legend
- Freakface
- Don't Let the Walls Eat Our Baby
- See Evil
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Area Control — Players try to kill other necromancers and jump into the pit.
- Card Driven — Players use cards with stats.
- Hex and counter — A war game played on a hex map with little cardboard cutouts.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- It's really unapologetically black metal and it's just great.
- The end game felt a lot of I just need to get the stamps now. It's kind of like all this stuff you've been doing all game doesn't matter at the very end.
- He famously said, 'I love all of your games. I really love Ball Blazer.'
- It's like the most heavy metal board game of all you can play like Brutal Legend the board game.
- I always in my mind I always say betrayal at the House on the Hill.
- I love Cat in the Box Deluxe.
- I wish I came up with this idea because a lot of people I've seen other people do that when they play it for the first time back in the day few years ago, they were like, 'Oh, this is so clever, but it's so simple.'
- I wish I thought of that.
- It's like you know, I stopped cuz I realized how hard board games are to design.
- I have a ton of respect for board game designers.
References (from this video)
- pretty decent game
- boring-looking production
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- So, we have a game here called Sequoia. This is from 2022.
- It's It's fine. I'm giving it a six. Uh Beasty Bars is is is a fun style game where you're playing these different type of animals, and I think each additional expansion made it more complex and less fun.
- Trias is an old dinosaur game that originally came with cubes, and eventually they had little dinosaurs in it instead. And it's kind of grow out to different things. This is a very I have this ranked as a seven. Probably now, the next time I go through my rankings, I'll probably rank it as a six because it's fine, but it's showing its age.
- All righty, of all the games we talked about today, my favorite here is clearly David Goliath, although Hooky is a very close second.
- Either way, it's always good to talk to you all.