Review of the board game Massive Darkness
Review of the board game Massive Darkness
Massive Darkness is one of the shining examples of the symbiosis of modern board games and Kickstarter. With $ 3.5 million in funding and 22,000 supporters, we just had to look and see what it was all about. Check out the full overview of Massive Darkness board games below.
There is nothing better than packing your gear with a group of adventurers to travel into the unknown. The dungeons are full of treasures and horrors - you never know what will be hiding around the next bend. Fantasy adventure is one of my favorite topics in literature and it’s great if you can experience it outside of a book, for example in a game (or in search of D&D). Massive Darkness nicely fills that niche.
Massive Darkness is a dungeon-crawling , cooperative board game without a master game. Explore the theme for prey and experience facing hordes of super miniatures . The components are of exceptional quality, the rules are simple, and the mechanics allow for variable combinations of players and experience. So grab some friends, grab a table and get ready for some good old sneaks and haircuts.
Darkness returned to the land. Answer the call, Heroes!
In Massive Darkness you will join forces with other players to enter the underground lair of darkness. You will cooperate, jump from the shadows into the light and fight the enemy when the time is right. Servants of darkness can be anything from orcs to goblins, to giant spiders. You will never know what creatures are waiting for you around every corner. Play quests to follow the story, or create your own legends with chips and modular boards. The Lightbringers have won this war once before. Now it’s your turn to add your names to the history books!
- For 1 to 6 players
- The whole campaign: story mode There are 10 unique tasks in ...
- Amazing numbers: a huge theme comes with six detailed ...
A brief overview of the big topic
In Massive Darkness, you and your fellow light rings - bearers of weapons and spells united against the reviving forces of darkness - set out on the fringes of society and find the monstrous races that were subdued in the war of the previous generation. The game offers two play modes, a single shot game and an extended RPG-style campaign where your character retains equipment and levels between games. Digging dungeons is a dark job and you will have to use shadows to survive.
Variations and extensions
Unpacking a massive theme
The first thing you’ll notice about Massive Darkness is that it’s MASSIVE (who would have thought?). The box is huge and with good reason. With the basic version of the game, you get a huge amount of stuff. This does not even include any of the many extensions and add-ons that Kickstarter has been promised.
Components: (We will need a bigger table)
- 75 Extremely detailed images
- 6 plastic control panels
- 6 colored plastic bases
- 12 colored plastic hooks
- 12 Custom Cubes
- 9 double-sided game tiles
- Cards 280
- 6 class pads
- 111 tokens
- 1 Rules
- For 1 to 6 players
- The whole campaign: story mode There are 10 unique tasks in ...
- Amazing numbers: a huge theme comes with six detailed ...
With the game you get 75 highly detailed Miniatures . I know it sounds like a cheesy advertising gimmick, but you really should take the time to look at all the components. They are great. Dwarves and monsters are already pretty tidy, but if you check online, you’ll see that some have painted them by hand and look even better.
The next main component will be large signboards. They are very similar to the ones you will find in Zombicide Game, and I think they are a great way to monitor your character. We'll take a closer look at what they do in the "Your First Game" section.
You also get more sheets with characters and abilities. This will look confusing, but I promise it’s not as complicated as it seems.
Create your hero:
Heroes start with natural beginner skills, but you can customize them to your way of playing with different classes, weapons, and skills as they rise.
All the heroes stick to pretty common fantasy roles - you have Barbara (a fighter), Berserker (a really angry fighter), Paladin (a fighter who fights on the battlefield), Wizard (a fighter with spelling), Ranger (a fighter who he can shoot a bow) and Rogue (a fighter in hiding). It makes sense to try to play your group with different characters so that you have a good mix of skills.
Shadow mode:
Underground dens are a mixture of shade and light. Entering the Shadow Cones theme gives the characters access to strong shadowing abilities.
Fully cooperative:
Your success or failure will come as a team. Team up to fight the minions of darkness and achieve your goals.
How to play Massive Darkness
Shadow mode
A massive theme at its core is the Dungeon-Crawler Game . Dungeons are not usually known for being heavily lit with native floral backgrounds. They are dark and foreboding. Massive Darkness with its shadow mode system really revives this aspect. If you look at the board, the places that are illuminated are clearly marked, while others are dark and hidden in the shade. When your character is in the shadows, he can activate shadow mode abilities and hide in the dark to hide or use devastating attacks.
Lifebringer card
A life belt card is placed before each match. On top of that, you’ll set a number of tokens for living according to the script. This card adjusts the difficulty of the game because each token on the card represents a respawn for the character. If it takes you over early, no big deal. At the beginning of the map, just revive your character and remove the lifeline token. If you ever run out of chips, the game is over. Think of it as a built-in troublesome setup. Just like when you played old school SNES games in simple mode, you got more lives and less in hard. It’s a pretty ingenious way to incorporate brakes and balance into the game.
- For 1 to 6 players
- The whole campaign: story mode There are 10 unique tasks in ...
- Amazing numbers: a huge theme comes with six detailed ...
Signs
Each player will have a sign board with all the information about the characters. The main slot contains a card with signs, the two slots below indicate the two hands of your hero and hold the weapon there, and the slot on the right for armor. The holes on the left show your current health, and the holes on the right show how much experience you have gained.
Compensatory hazards
As you advance further into the dungeon, you will encounter more and more powerful monsters. Each cardboard tile tile shows how big the dungeon is, and as you progress to the next part of the map, the monsters you encounter will become stronger. This is represented by the various safety decks numbered 1-5.
Each time you explore the room, the map you draw will show the number of treasures and monsters you will encounter. The door card will tell you how many and where to install them. If you are still on the first tile of the map, you will draw from the safety deck 1. If you come to the second tile of the map, you will start drawing from the safety deck 2, etc.
Your first big theme game
Step 1: Choose your character.
For each character, you will notice that there is a suggested class. Each character will have their own individual character abilities, but will also have a set of class abilities that can also be elevated. This means you can mix and match classes and add a little variety when choosing characters. You can even make a wizard if you really want to.
Step 2: Try not to die.
You can choose from several scenarios and like most games, the first will be the basic setting to help you present the game. Training dungeons are very easy to follow. You need to find the key and get to the exit.
Advantages and disadvantages of massive themes
Good
About Miniature are amazing. The quality of the Miniature is top notch in my opinion and they all look fantastic. The giant spider in particular is my favorite and you get a ton of miniatures in the box.
The character boards and abilities of each character are very cool. It adds a ton of repeatability to the game and I love the leveling mechanics. There’s something about seeing your weak character eventually become a beastly destructive ball.
The Shadow mechanics work very well and add a lot of depth to the game. Sometimes you will be faced with a group of monsters that you simply cannot kill without incurring great losses, and it gives you a chance to escape. That added a bit of fun realism to the game for me. Usually when you play a game, you never get a challenge that is impossible. It is very possible here that the monster could overtake you, but it is up to you to decide to fight or flee. We appreciate that the game offers you several ways to approach the situation. Overall, I was very impressed with him.
Monster balancing mechanics also work great. When you draw from certain protective decks to reveal which monsters you are fighting, it still seems very balanced. CMON did a great job of creating a system that is on par with you, so you never really feel like the game is too easy or too demanding.
- For 1 to 6 players
- The whole campaign: story mode There are 10 unique tasks in ...
- Amazing numbers: a huge theme comes with six detailed ...
Bad
A massive theme becomes exponentially harder as you add more players. Honestly, this can count as a plus or a minus, depending on your preferences. On the one hand, you’re forced to really work alongside other players as you add more, and on the other hand, your leveling and skill growth starts to slow down to creep, which is one of the cooler aspects of the game.
There have been some complaints about the organization of the boxes, which is not surprising as they have crammed so many Miniatures and components into the box. It is legally difficult to close a box if everything is not completely in place. This is a minor distraction from the game than any real flaw.
TL; DR
- Massive Darkness is a Dungeon-Crawler with RPG elements.
- You will get a lot of high quality Miniatures .
- The game has two game modes.
- Single shot mode where leveling is accelerated.
- Story mode where the leveling is slowed down but the characters are persistent during playback.
- Massive Darkness has a very high playback value and has 10 missions in the campaign. Kickstarter supporters received more.
- There are already some major extensions that add a lot more miniatures, new characters, prison tiles and more scenarios.
conclusion
Massive Darkness is one of the coolest dungeon spider games out there. It comes with a bunch of fun themed items that work really well. In particular, the Shadow system works as a natural progression of the theme and they did really well with it. The balancing system is a lot of fun and the quality of the production value is amazing.
The two Massive Darkness modes: single-shot advertising and story mode have very different compensation systems. In my experience, games with two different modes tend to favor each other. One simply overshadows the other in every way. Massive Darkness is a one-time campaign. The balancing system feels well-arranged and balanced. It allows you to start exploring dungeons with cool abilities relatively quickly.
The version in story mode sometimes seems very slow and boring. The story mode may look unpolished compared to the single shot mode. It’s still fun, but it doesn’t seem to impress me as much as playing one shot.
All of the above MD is a force to be reckoned with. So sit back, clear a LARGE space on the table and get ready for a beautifully designed adventure.
- For 1 to 6 players
- The whole campaign: story mode There are 10 unique tasks in ...
- Amazing numbers: a huge theme comes with six detailed ...
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