The Dungeon Dive's Top 50 Games of All Time* - part 3

0:11 hey everybody welcome back to the dungeon dive daniel here and welcome back to the third part of the dungeon dives top 50 games of all time and today we're going to be looking at numbers 30 through 21. um one little piece of housekeeping uh for those of you interested i did start a dungeon dive guild on um on board game geek recently and i'm going to be posting some videos there it's a little bit easier to discuss things in a nice forum so if you want to head over there and join the guild and start participating in the forum there that would be super cool so all right let's get cracking into the uh this group of ten and we're going to start with number 30 and number 30 uh is secret unknown stuff escape from dulce i love that title it's so cool it's so uh pulpy and cheesy and that is from 2018 sentient cow games is the publisher and designers donna ackerson craig e sawyer and chris weller so secret unknown stuff is uh it's a really really simple game you basically do the same thing every turn you move your character into a new room you draw an encounter card you face that encounter rinse and repeat but in that simplicity lies a ton of fun there is so much loot there are so many different encounters the characters are fun and interesting and and have cool

1:41 powers that you get to level up a really simple but good character progression is a zero to hero game so you don't have to worry about a campaign and it's just fun i mean it's one of the most just pure kind of fun dungeon crawls that i have ever played um while the 3d boards the towers that you build why they look pretty cool and it does add some table presents i think sometimes they are a little it's a little more a little more work to set them up and put them away than i like so sometimes i just play with the with the with the uh with the board set out in a flat surface and the game can get a little repetitive especially towards the end but um overall i think escape secret unknown stuff is awesome so uh let's go to number 29 now and 29 coming from uh 2011 and flying frog productions designer jason c hill and that is fortune and glory the cliff hanger game um if you are into pulp fiction if you are into adventure fiction uh this is the game for you if you have ever dreamt of playing a board game of indiana jones uh this is the game for you it's a huge sprawling kind of uh epic globe trotting adventure i mean it is just the very definition of pulp gaming there are so many different encounters

3:12 so many different things to explore and to to come across that it almost feels like anything can happen at any moment and even though it's all random somehow it's so thematically sound with a just a such a strong thematic vision that things always connect together even though they're random it's it's really cool it creates really interesting little micro stories um there are a ton of rules and two kind of like needed supplements i think are fan made flow charts on how to move through the game there are a ton of little details to miss so many little rules to to get wrong so many little edge cases that i can't imagine ever actually playing the game 100 correctly so that is a little bit of a negative for fortune and glory the cliffhanger game and let's see uh number 28 we are returning to the world of roon bound but here with second edition and that is from 2005 fantasy flight games designers daryl hardy and martin wallace so uh second edition is different enough from third edition that they i think they are they're they're they are two separate games really kind of set in the same map in the same world what makes second edition for me better is all of the expansions this game has

4:44 so many cool expansions from the small box expansions which just kind of add a whole bunch of cards to the various decks and some of the small box expansions actually change your wind conditions so they add kind of a different scenario and then you have a whole bunch of these large box expansions that add a new map and all kinds of new things you have to deal with while while adventuring in a new environment like a snow covered peaks or a desert you might have to worry you know in the snow you might have to worry about about staying warm in the desert you might have to worry about collecting water and that kind of stuff the expansions really do make this a great game and there are also a ton of fan-made expansions and there's some really cool fan-made expansions that you can look if you just go to like arts cow or printer studio and you search for roon bound you can find these decks of cards that some people have made there's this one system it's a quest system where you have to go and you have to find these like clues that will pinpoint you to a certain terrain a certain terrain hex on the map and then you can try to solve or try to complete a quest card at that location really cool little expansion um like a lot of these games it is a little long for the payoff things can seem a little anti-climatic as you get towards the end of the game and as you start introducing the large box expansions they all start

6:15 introducing quite a few more rules and wrinkles so it can be hard to keep things apart but if you're looking for the way i like to play the games i play solo where i'm just trying to beat the game on my own and with expansions and with that kind of play it really does feel like this huge kind of vast open world sandbox adventure game so i really enjoy runebound second edition okay and uh number 27 here uh one of the newest games in this sector in in this section of games and that is from 2020 and that is a dungeon crusade book one genesis of evil from groovus games unlimited and designed by roger deering uh one thing like just you know straight out of the gate dungeon crusade has the best dungeon tile art and i've ever seen i absolutely love the way that various dungeons look they are so evocative of the theme and they just really do so much to draw you in to the experience there's a ton of loot and encounters ah the game really is an abundance of stuff and it also is an abundance of stuff the game takes up a ton of table space i have to do a lot of work to get this game played on my small table in my hobby room

7:45 and i've done videos on how i play this game i have to modify a lot of this not the systems but the way that the game is set up just to be able to play it but i actually prefer to play my version of the smaller setup it just isn't quite as sprawling another thing that the game takes abundance of is time my god this is the longest like single session game i've ever played with games lasting up to like 12 plus hours but some other bonuses or some other good things about the game is the the minion movement system the ai system how the minions move throughout the dungeon and how they interact with the heroes really creates for some interesting intense moments and i love that roger is super committed to the game because it was even though it was baking for a long time it it came out there were some issues especially with the rule book but he's been um he and some uh some close friends have been tackling those issues making it better they've added uh they've changed up the combat so there's like a a faster combat system now there's a solo a true solo mode where you can do one hero with a couple um mercenaries and i i think the game has a really bright future and it's still really good but it's only going to get better as time goes on so that was a dungeon crusade book one at number 27.

9:10 and uh 26 coming from 2016 and ganesha games and designer andreas safiligoy and that is for against darkness uh four against darkness one of the most expanded games of all time i mean there are like i'm looking at my shelf right now there's got to be like 40 expansions or something for this game it's insane and i do think you absolutely need some of the expansions the core book while it's cheap and it does offer some good gaming i think it's going to get pretty repetitive pretty quickly but as you start buying the little book expansions the game is just like it is it is overflowing with choices without these like kind of modular pieces that you can put in it is a very very customizable game so you can really tailor the game to be exactly the kind of game you want it to be it's uh it's it it's yeah it's highly customizable i think that's the best way to to uh the best way to describe for it against darkness it reminds me of old computer rpgs like wizardry and bard's tale where you are taking a a small group of characters the characters aren't super complex they're pretty they're pretty easy you can fit like all four characters on a little piece of paper and the combat is simple all the elements are simple but then you can add these interesting layers to it with all kinds of different dungeons and monsters and traps and powers and magic and loot and all kinds of things so yeah that was

10:41 before against darkness uh number 25 so this game actually dropped off my top 10 um not because i think the game got worse or anything but i just i haven't played it and that is from 2019 mantic games designers james m hewitt and sophie williams and that is hellboy the board game i i mean i haven't played it recently like in a year or so the last kickstarter that they did for like an expansion really put kind of a sour taste in my mouth so that might have something to do with it it was really expensive and they i believe they like forced you to take on this uh hellboy dice game or something as part of the pledge i don't know i didn't back it i it just it left a really sour taste in my mouth the the way they handled that last kickstarter so it did drop off my top 10 but just because i haven't played it in a year or so but it is a game i think about often um the characters are really shine in this game they feel different they play different they have interesting powers and abilities and you do really need to play them as a team if you're playing co-op you need to work together to balance your character's uh str strengths and weaknesses if you don't utilize your characters well in in in a team you're not going to win the game it can be very hard if you all just kind of play however you want to play so they do need to work together as a cohesive superhero team

12:12 and i think it's really fast paced and the simple quest system keeps the game on track and you're kind of constantly pushing forward there's a lot of momentum in the game and i really really appreciate that i also think that i still feel like the core box the retail box is not a very good representation of how good the game can be i do think you need a little bit more than what is just in that core box and i i can't imagine personally playing without like the first uh kickstarter uh pledge so something to keep in mind if you're looking at that at retail okay and then we have uh number 24 and that is darkest night second edition from 2018 victory point games and designer jeremy leonard so this is a real kind of classic co-op game it has that classic kind of pandemic style threat management with some adventuring elements but it is a it is a threat management co-op game before it is an adventure uh style game one of the best things about the game is there are just an abundance of characters so many i think there's 28 different characters they each one of the characters has its own deck of like 13 different powers that you can learn

13:44 and trigger at certain points in the game the powers are very different you have to learn to work together i love just picking like three random characters and trying to make them work together balancing their strengths and weaknesses like in hellboy and uh coming up with cool kind of synergies between all three of the characters there's always cool unique things that you can do the game has quite a few rules so it does take a while to learn but once you start playing it's very simple and it's very fast you only take one action on a turn and for some people when they think of that wow that's uh that's crazy like i don't know any other game where you only take like one action so the the turns are really fast and it just kind of really keeps things moving it also has a very elegant look it looks great on the table the components are high quality the cards feel nice the cardboard feels nice the standees are nice it's just overall it's a really good boxed product i love it um there's a lot of options too in the rules of like different ways you can tailor the difficulty a couple different ways you can play the game so uh yeah that was darkest night it can be a little more mechanical than i usually like a little more puzzle-like than what usually appeals to me but everything else kind of uh outweighs those negatives for me and i do really like the game

15:14 uh number 23 coming from 2020 and that is rogue dungeon from the game crafter and that is designers albert danish chad randall vinicia and john smith for just a purely card based dungeon crawl rogue dungeon feels it has the feeling of a big dungeon crawl and it is an excellent roguelike experience where you are just kind of randomly you have a character and you are trying to get them through a few levels of a dungeon to face off against the boss and death comes quick and easy as we all know in in these roguelike games it is a has a really clever use of a somewhat limited number of pro of uh components you know the game is in a pretty small box but once you start playing you don't you no longer think that you're just playing a small box game it has this kind of big feel and there is just enough variety to satisfy people looking for a variety of encounters it's super simple to set up pretty easy to learn and play you can play a couple games in an hour and and easy to pack up it's just it's like a no effort game and i really appreciate no effort games recently or more recently um i do think that it needs a second edition to add a uh

16:45 to add more of a vision for the look and feel for the art for the aesthetics it's kind of all over the place and it just doesn't look great but with a with a kind of a a developer behind it who could who could hone the vision this could be a stone cold classic and i also would like to see one expansion that maybe adds like five to ten cards to every deck just to kind of push it over the edge of just enough to variety to satisfy to like okay there is now a like an abundance of variety to really satisfy so that was number 23 with rogue dungeon uh 22 so over the years before the new hero quest came out for many years people were clamoring for we want a new hero quest we want uh something that offers up that same kind of feeling of hero quest it's it's easy to play it's easy to set up uh you know it's a one versus mini game that doesn't take a ton of time that is just kind of like effortlessly fun and this was that but so many people slept on it and that is a warhammer quest shadows over hammer hall from 2017 uh games workshop i call war i call this better hero quest because that is what it is the system is better but it's not any it's not really any more complex than hero quest it's just more there's just a little more to it and a few more decisions for the players to to make and that the characters are just more interesting but the way the game is constructed it's

18:16 an it's like an eight level dungeon and each floor is a session but there are multiple ways in and out of the dungeon and the floors might connect to other different floors and in between the floors the uh the heroes the the party can find a stairway that goes back to the city where you can do a little city um a little uh city phase a town phase it's just really cool it does a lot with a little that's in the box it is expensive and so that's probably why it didn't have that kind of like mass appeal but for a long time people were saying they wanted hero quest again but everybody everybody slept on shadows over hammer hall um it does need a little more variety especially in the enemies and so that's why i do um too bad i mean it's all out of print now so you know games workshop it sucks but i i if you are looking to get it i do highly recommend you pick up the chaos adversary card pack because that adds a lot of variety and also try to hunt down the three issues i believe of white dwarf that had content for this because it adds three kind of side quest dungeons that you can go on and i like to mix in some of the stuff with a silver tower as well into hammer hull you know just to add that needed variety so that was number 22 warhammer quest shadows over hammer hall and finally today 21 another game from a

19:47 flying frog productions another game designed by jason c hill and that is from 2008 a touch of evil the supernatural game a touch of evil is absolutely dripping absolutely overflowing with theme this game feels like you are playing an old hammer house of horror movie in a board game uh it's creepy but it's cheesy it's pulpy it's adventurous it has uh just all kinds of like cliff like like like fortune and glory these kind of like cliff hanging um elements to it you can visit all kinds of different uh places around the town and once you get the expansions with like the coast and and uh the uh what's the other guy i can't remember the other expansion right now but uh you can just you have this really cool sprawling map of the countryside that you can explore um it has a really good variety of encounters and the different in the different boss monsters they feel different they all add a little twist to the game it does work as both a competitive game where you're kind of playing it like an old-school talisman where each hero is trying to beat the boss and it also works perfectly well as a co-op slash solo game so it it some games they have a competitive and co-op mode and you can usually tell which one was the focus and which one was the afterthought

21:19 but in a touch of evil they both work really well and i enjoy playing it both ways um i know that sometimes the cheesy photography the the the um the cosplay style photography and art does uh turn some people off but i think it's really cool it's it's different it's unique it has a lot of character to it and it does add to that kind of you know hammer house of horror quality or dark shadows quality that i think the game is really going for so yeah so that was uh that was the list today let me um i always drop my paper and so i can't do the recap but uh so we had that number 30 secret unknown stuff escaped from dulce 29 fortune in glory the cliffhanger game 28 roon bound second edition and then we had number 27 dungeon crusade 26 for against darkness 25 hellboy 24 darkest night second edition 23 rogue dungeon 22 warhammer quest and 21 a touch of evil the supernatural game so alright guys well i hope you enjoyed this uh segment of the dungeon dives top 50 games of all time and we'll see you next time bye