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As unlikely heroes, you must explore unknown lands, fight unconventional enemies, dodge silly traps, and collect monster runes hidden within ancient shrines scattered across the realms. Once you have collected the 3 runes, unlock the portal to face the monstrous threat!
Choose your heroes and set out as a team to find the runes hidden in Shrines across three realms. Grab your coins, stock up on items at the Gift Shop, and jump into your first realm.
In each realm you:
1. Explore 2. Level Up 3. Shop
REALM SET UP:
Grab 6 random story cards, 4 enemies, 2 traps, 1 shrine & 1 portal. Grab a map card. Shuffle the area cards and place them face down matching the map layout.
EXPLORE
Each player will have a chance to choose the next unexplored area as the Party Leader. Find the Shrine to strengthen your heroes, revive the dead, heal the team, and gain new skills.
LEVEL UP
The colors on the left of your Hero's player mat show each Hero's unique skill profile. At the shrine pick 3 skill cards of the same color at random. Choose from one of those 3 skills the best that you think works best with your hero and complements your party.
SHOP
Exit each realm through the portal into the gift shop. Spend your hard-earned coins on fantastic loot like pool noodles, toast, and headphones! Upgrade your hero's health, power, and weapons. Your runes unlock the ancient portal. Slay the monster to free the realms or die trying.
Types of areas:
STORY
These areas are sometimes good and sometimes bad. You often have choices, have to role the dice for random outcomes, and use your skills and items to navigate.
TRAP
These areas are always bad. Each trap has a unique action, a chance to dodge, and a damage outcome.
ENEMIES
These areas are where you really see if you have levelup your character well and purchased useful items. Each enemy is unique, offers a ton of variation. You attack with your weapon designated by your attack dice that you can upgrade, add your bonus power and damage the enemy. Defeating enemies brings rewards.
SHRINE
This is where you level up your characters and heal.
PORTAL
This is where you leave the realm and travel to the next. You take a must needed visit to the Gift Shop to buy items and loot.
How to Win:
After completing 3 realms. You have collected the 3 monster runes and when you use the portal next you fight 1 of 3 monsters. Defeat this monster and you win the game.
—description from the publisher
- The only part of the game that's fun is when you draw abilities and pick which ability to utilize.
- Good presentation
- Hated it
- Everything else about the game is terrible
- Very little agency
- Not a ton of choice
- No real mitigation, decision, choices, abilities, action, economy
- Incentivized to avoid the things in the game
- Game is way too hard luck dependent
- Design flaw
- Can die way too early, way too easily
- Reward for monster is not worth the amount of health you're going to lose
- My kids will not play this game again
- Lack of any decision space
- Way too hard and possibly requiring house rules
- Five Minute One Piece
- Scurry Up
- Critter Kitchen
- Sheriff of Nottingham
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Action Point Allowance — The action economy is just not there.
- Character progression — you're getting abilities you're going to slot into your character's dashboard. As you find the portals and the shrines, you're going to be powering up, drawing abilities and then building out your unique character and how they work
- cooperative play — I've played it solo and cooperatively
- Dice Rolling — you roll dice. You have to go ahead and evade, roll dice. You have to go on an attack, roll dice.
- map exploration — you're laying out a map. You're going through three phases and you have to go through these three phases, places, whatever you want to call them before you go ahead and face off against the boss.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Some of them I wish I hadn't.
- This is basically 90% Fiveminute Dungeon, 80 80% Fiveminute Dungeon.
- I wanted to like and I unfortunately do not.
- Everything else about the game, in my opinion, is terrible.
- This is weirdly hard and luck dependent for a game that has no decision space.
- If you aren't talking to other players, this is a terrible experience.
- Temple Code is a deduction game.
- I like it. It's fun. It's a 3.5 to five.
- That has been your roundup review of five different games.
References (from this video)
- Fast, light, simple game
- Not easy
- So little decision making
- The game is random
- Ratings seem incentivized or not based on experience
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Decision making — so little decision making in this game. You're making so few decisions that have any genuine meaning to it.
- randomness — the game is random as far as you may get slapped in the face really, really hard in four out of five of the games
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Would not recommend.
- I feel like I must be missing something with this one because Coimbra is a game that I I I thought was fine. Like not even like good. It was just fine.
- Coimbra was a complete miss for me and my group.
- This one also did not work for me.
- It is a fast, light, simple game, but it's also not easy and it's also incredibly like so little decision making in this game.
- the game is random as far as you may get slapped in the face really, really hard in four out of five of the games and then get like a little lucky in the way things come out.
- I just think that I spent enough time on BoardGameGeek over the years that when ratings have been incentivized in some way...
- The vibe I got, like if I found out, I guess the way I'd put it is if I found out they ran a get $5 off your next purchase with us if you go rate the game on BGG, I wouldn't be surprised.
References (from this video)
- Flavorful flavor text and thematic immersion
- High variability with expansion content and multiple character options
- Engaging co-op tension and loop of exploration, combat, and shop decisions
- Difficulty ramps up with more players; can feel brutal
- Rules and setup are dense; longer learning curve
- Deluxe components can be expensive and might be overkill for light players
- Besties Versus Baddies
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Boss Battler — With the expansion Besties Versus Baddies, a boss is chosen by a die roll from sanctuary runes, altering the endgame encounter.
- Boss selection via rune and expansion rules — With the expansion Besties Versus Baddies, a boss is chosen by a die roll from sanctuary runes, altering the endgame encounter.
- Combat: Dice — Characters roll a core die plus weapon dice to deal damage; managing dice capacity and upgrades is central to survivability.
- Cooperative play with rotating party leadership — Two players control up to six or more characters (depending on expansion) and share exploration and combat; leadership determines rewards and choices each turn.
- Dice-based combat and dice economy — Characters roll a core die plus weapon dice to deal damage; managing dice capacity and upgrades is central to survivability.
- Gift shop phase — After certain milestones, players visit a gift shop to buy loot or shields with coins and loot cards; a shared pool influences long-term power.
- Loot, shields, and backpacks — Loot cards and shield tokens are acquired at shops or as rewards and are stored in backpacks, influencing future encounters.
- Priority target and attack sequencing — Each character has a priority target; dice determine who is attacked, affecting survivability and strategy.
- Realm deck setup and exploration — Three realm decks are built with a fixed composition per realm (events, enemies, traps, sanctuaries, portals) and are revealed as players explore.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- This game is so much fun. If you're prepared to die and die often, this is a game for you.
- I love the flavor text in this game. It's super enjoyable.
- Cuz how many games have a gift shop in them? Not many.
- That was a playthrough of Fable Fury.
- Shields are incredibly important.
- Gift shop in realm three? Not many.