Panzer's Tabletop Corner

So many games past few weeks, time to catch up on some more reviews hehe. So up next is a simple new card game we tried that plays heavy on gamer nostalgia




First Impressions: So yea, try to look at that box and don't smile at the nostalgia. Boss Monster is a simple competitive card game for up to 4 players. The theme is classic 8-bit side scroller games, where a Boss monster is waiting at the end of the level. In this game though you play as one of the random boss monsters, and you play cards to create a dungeon level that heroes will attempt to go through to kill you. Win the game by killing the heroes! You compete with opponents by trying to lure the heroes from town to come to your dungeon so you can gather their pathetic souls

Gameplay: The game initially has players choose a random boss monster from a deck of choices, each has a unique special ability that you can unlock in game as well as an XP value which is merely an initiative order indicator to determine card order play. You have three decks of cards in the game, 1 being a deck of heroes, 1 deck for spell cards, and a deck of room cards. As with any proper side scrolling classic 8-bit game, the heroes goes from the left to the right until he/she reaches the boss. So how players start is by placing their boss on the table, players then need to use room cards by adding them to the left of the boss card to create a row. Each room card represents a stage/room of your dungeon that a hero must overcome. So as you add rooms, you create a line of room cards to represent your 8-bit dungeon. Each room you place also has treasure, which is what you use to lure heroes to come to your dungeon.

At the start of each turn, new heroes appear in town in the center of the table. Players then take turns adding to or modifying their dungeon. Once that is done, heroes will go to a dungeon that lures them in, this is done by each hero type having a type of treasure they want. The player who has the dungeon with the most treasure of the type a hero wants, lures that hero in. Some heroes might not leave the town, so the town can gather more heroes each turn. Once the heroes had a turn being lured in, they then will try to make it through your dungeon. Adventuring is simply done by moving a hero card across your dungeon one room at a time, each room typically doing damage or some other effect to the hero. If the hero survives the room, it enters the next room and so on. If a hero survives all your rooms and makes it to the boss monster room, he deals damage to the boss. If a boss monster ever takes 5 wounds, that player is eliminated. If the hero failed to reach the boss and is dealt enough damage, the boss monster claims that heroes soul. The goal of the game simply being, collect 10 souls. Besides effects on the rooms itself which all have different triggers, players can also get spell cards, which are played at different points of the game to create different effects, such as buffing a room, messing with a hero, or basically screwing over another player.



Final Thoughts: The game has a nice little theme and it plays quick. Lot of little jokes on the cards and references to old and current day games even. Mechanics are quite simple, though rulebook isn't best written to me. The game can be played fairly quick and it can have pretty large swings in whose winning. Because of this, the game can seem a bit unpredictable.

Pros/Cons:
+ Cheap and quick little game
+ Easy to play
+ Nostalgia love, great design
- Not a lot of depth.
- Iffy rulebook, developers working on updated book.