‘Get ready to graduate from the most renowned academy in the realm! Monsters, potions, and loot await discovery in every room. Be quick with a pen and your plan to master every Level, surpass the other Heroes, and earn the most Glory to receive the diploma from Dungeon Academy and win!’
Gameplay:
Use a timer and set the level of difficulty (1 minute, 45 seconds or 30 seconds)
You then prepare the dungeon by holding the roof of the dungeon upside down and roll the 16 room dice into it. In each of the 16 rooms, you will find a monster to fight (red or blue) or a potion to restore your health (red or blue).
Start the timer at the same time as you reveal the dungeon. Your job is to find a path through the dungeon. You have to start and finish your path on one of the Dungeon’s outer rooms. Rooms are connected horizontally or vertically- you can’t move diagonally. It is forbidden to move through the same room twice. The first person to finish their path takes the top exit card and so on and so forth.
You then resolve the dungeon working your way through it using your health to slay monsters and drinking potion to replenish health. If you manage to exit the level then you completed and adventure and you tally the glory points.
Players who completed the adventure then earn loot and then you move onto the next level! At the start of level 2, one room die is replaced by the labyrinth die and at the end of level 4 one room die is replaced by a boss die.
After 4 levels, you total all the points and the player with the most glory points win.
Components:
16 base dice, 1 labyrinth die, 1 boss die - dice are dice! Fairly easy to read and understand the different images
1 teacher - used to show your path through the dungeon - cardboard standee, cute artwork
150 adventure sheets - sheets to record paths and points, very easy to use and record information
10 hero cards, 20 loot cards, 6 exit cards - chibli style artwork, really cute and explanations clear on cards
158 energy tokens - cardboard chits representing blue mana and red health
1 dungeon - you assemble this before your first game, it’s a little fiddly but works well and looks cool in keeping with theme
Overall thoughts:
We did not have many roll and writes when we were gifted this copy of Dungeon Academy but we really enjoy playing this. It’s different and the speed at which you have to make decisions means sometimes you make mistakes but that’s half the fun of it. It’s tense and the race element means you are trying to be as quick as possible while scoring as many points as you can. It’s a quick filler game but very enjoyable and a good laugh as you share your roots with your opponents and then take on the boss trying to score the most points. You can play as different hero’s who have a range of different abilities so replayability is strong with this game especially as you also have different levels of difficulties and a range of bosses who you might meet. Good silly fun and an enjoyable roll and write.
Thank you to The op for sending this copy for Review. All thoughts are my own.