Escape the Dark Castle

Rating based on one play where we just failed to escape. Not a huge amount of strategy but plenty of simple tactical decisions. Fun group experience.

Good thematic late night fun. Good for a couple plays a year.

Incl. Adventure pack 1-3 and Collectors box

While very random and difficult it's absolutely steeped with it's dark and gritty theme and is a simple joy to play with friends who aren't into the hours-long game play offered by "better" games. I find myself often playing it solo when I have a little bit of time and want to scratch the dungeon-crawl itch.

Opened the box. It looks so cool, so retro, so damn playable. Two hours later... it is cool, it is retro and it is so damn playable. My daughter and I played three games in those two hours, including a rule read too. First game, we managed only seven of the chapter cards. Second attempt we progressed through twelve of them and then failed by one of us falling down a flight of stairs, taking the characters final health point. In the third game, we final made it to the Dark Castles Overlord, The Terror of the Underworld. We were still fairly healthy at 16 health points each at this point. He took us down, destroyed our hope and banished us to oblivion. What a fantastic game! I own the kick start edition. I look forward to more from Themeborne.

Cool filler DC dripping with themed 70s'-80s' artwork! Always great to play. Punishing and hard to win makes for some epic struggles to survive more than exploring, lots of randomness, oldschool way. Genius because of how purely simple and fast it is from setup to end. It's focused on escaping alive from this dungeon full of gothic evil, no fiddliness, nothing gets in the way of your fun. I think it's already a classic. A must for DC fans, as close to the perfect filler as there is.

Probably being so simple is also one of his weaknesses, because it's not a memorable experience, as there's no time to create a bond with their characters. Also lacking replay value, expansions are needed. At the same time i suggest not to add extra rules/mechanisms from the expansions but only extra cards to give variety, the game's great because of how simple and streamlined it is, adding more rules will probably give you less. Sometimes less is more.

If you are looking for an atmospheric and ultimately fun cooperative game then this is definitely for you!

This was an amazing introduction to rpg's for my 8 yr old. The mechanics are simple enough to learn (10 mins max) and each turn of the chapter card presents the team with a new challenge. Dice rolling and decision making is at the core of this effective little RPG.

We turned the lights low and put on the atmospheric music. My son whispered in my ear "I'm a bit scared Dad" to which I replied "Don't worry, we're in this together!"... we didn't escape that time, but we had fun trying!

A lot of the encounters are basically the same but require a different stat to be rolled, main draw for this is that it's playable with kids.