I've always been good at games that have a solid mixture of speed and shouting. My brain thinks pretty quickly and I like yelling at people. Growing up we would play the Cranium games as a family and I always succeeded at guessing the charades, scribbles, and sculptures. There's that app game as well (Heads Up? I think it's Ellen's game) that was a pretty cool fad for a while that everyone played and I enjoyed as well. I missed the 5-Minute Dungeon original kickstarter - I looked at it, but I decided not to the pull the trigger. Later on, though, I had a gift card to Toys R Us and picked it up from there. Wow, am I glad I did! I have since backed the Curses! Foiled Again! expansion (which I received and love) and the just-ended 5-Minute Mystery campaign (which also has a solo mode, woohoo for me!). I even picked up a second copy of the game for my board game club at school.
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| The remains of battle. |
Obviously there is speed and shouting involved, but what is this game all about? Why is it so great? Why should I buy it? Let me tell you.
To sum it up, 5-Minute Dungeon is a timed cooperative symbol matching game. You work your way through different doors (cards) of a dungeon and have to play matching symbols from your cards to defeat/overcome the monster/obstacle/person on the card. Some of the enemy cards have special rules that affect you. You also have a choice from a few different heroes with different abilities. The base game comes with five dungeon bosses of increasing difficulty (the Curses! expansion added two more). If you clear the whole dungeon in 5 minutes (or less), you and your team win! If you don't clear the dungeon or you all run out of cards in your deck, you are vanquished.
TOTAL PLAYS: 50+
COMPONENTS
One of the greatest shames of this game is that you play it so fast that you don't get to appreciate the art on the enemy cards. The player cards have standard, simple artwork (which aren't stunning to look at it, but are very easy to decipher which symbol you have), but each and every one of the dungeon cards have a funny picture and an equally funny/punny title. It's worth it to just sit down and look through the deck and have a good chuckle because you won't have time to do it while playing the game.
I'll admit that I'm not an expert on card quality and thickness, but these ones seem just fine to me. I've played the game A LOT and the cards have stood up to all the shuffling and being flung across the table. The plastic tray in the box holds all of the cards and boards really nicely and makes set up and take down quick and easy. While everything works just fine, there are other games where the components feel a little sturdier and higher quality. 4/5
RULES
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| Defeating the gorgon. |
Games that are only played for five minutes should not have complex rules and that is definitely the case here. The rulebook is short and sweet and it's easy to find answers to your questions. After the first few games, the only questions you might need to look for are to remind yourself how many cards you have in your hand based on the number of players. Basically, as I explained earlier, you need to match the symbols on your cards to the symbols of the dungeon cards and bosses. The whole team (2-5 players or 2-6 with the expansion) play altogether at the same time. You also have special cards that might pause the time or allow you to draw more cards or instantly defeat a certain type of dungeon card. The rules are intuitive and really easy to pick up. 5/5
GAMEPLAY
Gameplay is fun and frantic. You yell at your teammates, calling for the cards that you don't have, hoping they'll pick up your slack. Another teammate shouts that they have a snipe card and can instantly kill the next person that comes along. As you match the symbols on the card, you swipe them out of the way and flip the next dungeon card, quickly deciphering the symbols and seeing what you have to contribute to the next skirmish. No one seems to have the right cards? Maybe the wizard will discard three cards to use his special ability and freeze time. This gives you a chance to collect yourselves, maybe discard a few cards, and prepare for battle. Maybe an awful event comes up that would have you all exchange hands with each other or discard all of your cards. Lucky for you the wizard also has a cancel event card - no losing cards for you! All of this happens in just 5 minutes, but I dare you to only play one round! 5/5
REPLAYABILITY
There are some games that feel different every time you play them. Even though the mechanics are the same, there are enough changes and different ways to win that each game feels different. 5-Minute Dungeon is not one of those games. Every game feels like a panicked race to match symbols before the timer runs out. That being said, because there are so many dungeon cards (that are shuffled each time), so many heroes, so many hero decks (that are shuffled each time), and so many bosses, each game will be completely different. You might be sitting on a snipe card and no people enemies show up. Even though there are only minor differences in strategy, there are still differences. I can easily play this game five or six times in a row and love every minute of it. For those who like drastic differences between each game, however, you won't find that here. 4/5
FUN
This is what it's all about, right? There are games with art I like more. Many games are making use of higher quality components. There is so much innovation in the industry these days that the replayability in some games is astounding. This game might not be the top of any of these categories, but dangit, is it fun! It's fast-paced, it's cooperative, everyone is involved, you've got to think about a bunch of things at once. This game is a blast! This is one of my favourite games to pull out with any game group because it's easy to learn but you can also ramp up the difficulty for veteran gamers. 9/10
TOTAL SCORE - 27/30
Love my some 5-Minute action. I think there is even a 5-Minute Marvel game and plans for other implementations in the future. Can't wait!
If you want more information on my review system, check out the full description here.
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