The Living Dungeon by RadiationBurn is a great strategy board game that you just happen to play on your PC or Xbox One! So it is perfect for people like me who love to play complicated board games but hate to clean them up. Hurray for games for lazy people!
The way The Living Dungeon works is you get five dice that have different actions on them: like move, attack, jump, ranged attack, and then some very special ones like spin a board piece or maybe flip the board piece to change up the dungeon completely. These five dice are the actions you are allowed to complete during your turn. So each person takes turns rolling dice and moving their characters. The Dungeon Master (DM) also has dice, but his have actions to move or add monsters, give special action cards to players, or change up the board even more. The image below kind of shows what I am taking about:
What is great is that you can either have the computer play the DM or let a friend do it to let him screw with you. It is also fun to trade off being the DM so everyone has equal opportunities to be a jerk. A lot of people can play The Living Dungeon at one time too with local multiplayer for up to nine, eight standard players and the DM, but it is still fun with less than that or against AI opponents. On top all of the multiplayer content there is a single player component too, but it is the same game with a story attached. Fun for if you can’t get any friends to come and visit. It is a shame this game doesn’t have online play because it would be a great way to kill a few hours with random strangers or friends that hate to drive.
The Living Dungeon is not without issues. For one the camera: it seems like it is always flipping around, and sometimes it is pointed in just the perfect way to get you killed. It really needs a top down view. Another is how actions are selected. When you pick a die to play the character will automatically have the action ready to go, but they are generally going to do it the wrong way, so accidentally pressing a button to quickly has disastrous consequences, and of course there is no way to back out of the action once you have committed to it.
These small issues aside, The Living Dungeon is a lot of fun, and a great game to pick up if you love board games, or strategy video games for that matter. These small games are why the indie game scene is so important. Something like this would never come out of a major publisher. If you have an Xbox One or a PC you should give The Living Dungeon a look!
