It's weekly game night here at the Curious Desi Mind. Welcome to yet another Board Game review. Today we are going to be looking at a 2-4 player, tile drafting & laying game Dungeon Decorators, published by Slugfest Games, designed by Jeff LaFlam with artwork by T.L. Simons. Before proceeding I want to be clear that I received a copy of Dungeon Decorators from the game publisher for the purposes of this review. Here is the official how to play video to get acquainted with the rules of the game.

Quick Info about Dungeon Decorators

Players: 2-4

Time: 60-80 minutes

Age: 10+

1. Theme

In Dungeon Decorators, you are a dungeon decorator who specializes in setting up cozy underground spaces with the best decoration for your clients. You compete against your opponents to build the best dungeon with all the right accoutrements, so that villainous clients can move in and feel at home. The game theme is silly fun. It is intended humor and my kind of humor. It just hints at the fact that the theme is not to be taken too seriously. The idea of building dungeon is a lot of fun and hilarious when you think of decorating a dungeon. For all these reasons, I was really drawn to this game. The theme is something that works really well for me.

2. Aesthetics

The components to this game are of really good quality but I have a bit of problem with the artwork for the decoration tiles (which I will state in detail below) but that's all there is to complain. But the overall component quality I must say is very very good.

2 player end state of Dungeon Decorators

The game comes with a lot of components. The main part of the game, however, are the tiles that you draft from a center board and put it either in your storage or your dungeon. There are 120 such tiles and these tiles are double sided with decorations on one side and a room or hallway on the other. You draft these tiles decoration side up & decide to put it in your dungeon either as decoration or room/hallway. The best thing about these tiles is that the decoration side tells you exactly what the back of the tile is. If an edge of a decoration tile has a white icon on it, that corresponds to a passageway on the other side. If you look at the image below you will realize that the right side tiles are the other side to the left side tiles. I really love this concept. It is so neat and easy to understand and is absolutely brilliant. All the tiles pictured below are of thick cardboard and very high quality and feel. However, my problem here is with the graphic design of these tiles. Since decorating a dungeon is the main part of the theme and gameplay it makes sense to have better looking tiles. These tiles look dull, boring and monotonous.

Dungeon Decorators: Various tiles in the game

The tiles have 4 different action icons on them (pictured in the last row above). The actions are pretty simple and explained well in short on the player aid (pictured below) with more description about it in the rulebook. One of these actions is to take a generic tile (pictured above on right) which is another component in the game. These generic tiles have grey background and are easy to distinguish it. The player aid is double sided with scoring on the other side. I have to give a shout out to the rulebook. It is very well written, clear and shows some examples with proper illustrations.

Dungeon Decorators: Two Sided Player Aid & Rulebook.

As mentioned before, while drafting tiles you can put them into your dungeon or your player board. The game comes with 4 different one's for 4 players. They are well designed, again made of thick cardboard good quality and good art. They are double sided with spots to store your drafted tiles on one side and some character story on the other.

Dungeon Decorators: Player Boards

The game also packs with it a draft board, a score track, 4 player pawns and 4 score tracking cubes. All of these are pictured below. I am not particularly a fan of these pawns and cubes. I think they could have been better & more inline with the theme but they still do their job. There are a couple of tokens that come with the game (pictured below) which are good quality and distinguishable in what they do.

Dungeon Decorators: Other Components

The reason you are drafting tiles and putting them in the dungeon is to achieve decoration and shape goals (the backs of these cards are pictured above). These are private objectives you should achieve to gain points. There are also two different types of boss goals - blue & yellow (pictured above - Collimus Maximus & M'alice Fiendish Fae). These are public goals which are evaluated during endgame scoring. The Boss Goals have amazing artwork which makes the tiles feel like they are from another game. The artwork on these cards is exquisite and they clearly explain with small text what each card does. The Shape and Decoration Goals on the other hand are simple and minimalistic and show clear, non-confusing icons for different things, which I really like. (We will see more photos of those in the next section).

The game also includes two drawstring bags to draw the tiles from (pictured in the Gameplay section) and 4 starting tiles and 8 "50 point" chits which you collect once your score goes past 50. The game box is well designed again with brilliant artwork unlike the decoration tiles. I however feel the insert to the game should have been better but boy don't I feel that about a lot of games.

Dungeon Decorators Game Box

Overall, I think baring the art on the tiles the game components are really well designed and of high quality.

3. Replay ability

This is where the game really shines. There is a lot of play time included in this box. First and foremost, the game comes with 120 double sided tiles and you only choose 100 of them. This will mean that some games will have a mix of tiles not coming out. There are 36 shape goal cards and 36 decoration cards in the game. These are private objectives. Even if you go through 10-15 of them in a single game there are still plenty more to be discovered on later plays.

Some examples of decoration and shape goals

Along with this the game also comes with 18 Boss Goals - 9 each in two different decks - yellow and blue. These are public goals and you use 1 from each deck per game. This will give you plenty of games to discover new objectives which adds to the replability.

18 Boss Goal cards in two decks, blue(left) and yellow(right)

Not only this but the gameplay is quite differently with different player counts. For example in a two player game turn order is not as important as it is in the 4 player game. All this coupled with the inbuilt goal variations will make sure that there is plenty of replay value you get from this game.

4. Gameplay

The game play is very straightforward and simple which is the best thing I like about this game. At the start of the game you randomly choose 100 out of the 120 tiles and divide them into 50 each and place them in the two draw string bags supplied with the game (pictured below). You also add the 3 hourglass tiles to the red bag. You start drawing tiles from the blue bag and once done, you draw from the red bag. Once the third hourglass tile is drawn it signals the last round of the game.

Divide the tiles 50 each into these bags and add the three hourglass tiles to the red bag

Each game round consists of 5 simple steps, based on the turn order you draft a tile; resolve any actions the tile gives; decide to put the tile in dungeon or store it; score if you have any completed private goals (shape & decoration goals) and if you did refill your hand back to 4. That's it. As simple as it gets. At the end of the game your score is your current score plus whatever is in the public objectives (boss goals), stars in your rooms/hallways and the different & most common colors of your tiles. Whoever has the highest score wins! This is a "light euro" game with a lot of key decisions and strategies.

There were a few stand out things from the many games we played of this:
- The turn order seems extremely important in a 4 player game. If you are last you end up getting leftovers whereas if you are first you can get the better tile. However, the scenario is completely different in a 2 player game. There is no incentive for who goes first. 2 tiles are discarded and so players go only for the tile they want and the turn order is not at all important.
- In a couple of games the hourglass tiles came out very quickly (once back to back even after a lot of shuffling). This feels almost anti-climatic and feels like the end game snuck up on you real quick and you could be left with a lot of "almost" complete goals.
- Consecutive gameplay turns seemed more repetitive rather than feeling different which is honestly not a bad thing but I just wanted to state it here.

5. Ease of play & Economy

The game was able to surprise me with how easy it is to play. The name of the game, some of the artwork and the look of the rulebook made it feel that game was really daunting but in reality it is not. I think the theme of the game might throw off some people. This seems like a very nerdy and gamery theme (think Dungeon & Dragons etc) whereas deep down below the game is very welcoming. It has simple concepts and mechanisms which can be understood by everyone. But again the theme might keep it away from someone new to the hobby or families, which is indeed sad. The game is available on Slugfest website for $42.95 and on Amazon for $38 which might seem expensive to a common non gamer but with the great components and the number of components and a simpler gameplay I think it is priced fairly.

6. Tactics: Luck vs Strategy

Baring the small issues I mentioned in the gameplay, I really like the amount of strategy and decision making the game has to offer. Yes there is some luck to when the end game may sneak up on you or if you are waiting for a particular decoration icon it may not show up and stuff like that but it all adds to the amount of game the box has to offer.

Built Dungeon and achieved goal cards of a player at the end of the game

Higher number tiles are better tiles and so you would want them but that means you would be going late in the turn order next turn. Would it be wise to do so? Okay, I drafted this tile do I use it now or store it for later ? If I use it now, the decoration side is as good as the other side, which side should I put it in my dungeon? These are some of the decisions the game makes you take. The game rules is allow for one room/hallway tile fulfilling multiple objective/goal cards. There is enough strategy involved to use the arcane architect token to rotate/move your tiles so that you can fulfill multiple cards using the same tile. Similarly, once the game moves forward and part of your dungeon is build there are high chances of already having the decoration tiles done partly for you or sometimes even completely. We felt in our plays that shape goals are slightly more difficult to achieve compared to decoration goals but it's just what we faced. The luck factor comes in if the decoration you want doesn't come up early AND if the three hourglass tiles are drawn very early which ends the game earlier than expected. Rest of the gameplay is making those strategic choices.

Summary

Artwork – 7

Gameplay – 8

Family Friendly – 7

Total Rating – 7.5

Overall, I really like Dungeon Decorators. I think it is a fun game with a lot of simple concepts and one that would give you hours and hours of playing time because of the replay ability factor. However, the art on the tiles is boring and could throw people off. Along with that the theme could confuse a lot of people. It appears to be a very geeky game on the outside but its actually a very welcoming game in reality. The drafting part has some obvious similarities to Kingdomino (a very light game) whereas the dungeon building feels something like a lighter Castles of the Mad King Ludwig (a comparatively heavy game). Dungeon Decorators perfectly manages to the bridge the gap between the two. If you are not the one to look down on a game cause of its theme and if you like tile drafting and tile laying games, I would surely recommend Dungeon Decorators. I think it does a solid job in that genre and will give you a fun time of playing.

I hope you find this review useful and helps you make an educated choice on adding more and more games to your collection. As always thanks for reading and until my next blog post, stay safe, stay healthy and play even more boardgames.

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