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| By CMON Games |
Lord of the Things
Anyone who's ever read Lord of the Rings has dreamt of being like Frodo. Maybe not the whole "Getting Your Finger Bitten Off by Gollum" thing (spoiler alert), but you know, the other stuff. Or maybe your fantasy awakening was caused when Bastion rode Falkor in Neverending Story, or maybe you thought the coolest moment ever was when Sir Orrin Neville Smythe fought Bryagh at the end of Flight of Dragons (that, sir, is a deep cut), but whatever caused it, the end result was the same. If there was a quest, we wanted to go on it! The heroic deeds, slaying goblins, finding magical treasure to help you in your quest, it all sounded amazing! Unfortunately, not all of us are well equipped for questing...
That's where games like Massive Darkness from CMON Games comes in. Massive Darkness is the latest cooperative dungeon crawl from CMON Games. Based loosely on the Zombicide system, 1-6 players take on the roles of the Lightbringers, fighting against the ever encroaching, and abstract concept of, the DARKNESS. This might sound like it would involve flashlights, torches, and candles lighting up rooms and fending off the literal dark (note to game designers: that's an unexplored theme for a game if I've ever heard one), the actual nitty gritty of it is notably more run of the mill. Well equipped warriors consisting of dwarves, elves, wizards, and rogues finding treasure and hacking through hordes of bad guys.
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| I don't think this battle is going as planned... |
That's where games like Massive Darkness from CMON Games comes in. Massive Darkness is the latest cooperative dungeon crawl from CMON Games. Based loosely on the Zombicide system, 1-6 players take on the roles of the Lightbringers, fighting against the ever encroaching, and abstract concept of, the DARKNESS. This might sound like it would involve flashlights, torches, and candles lighting up rooms and fending off the literal dark (note to game designers: that's an unexplored theme for a game if I've ever heard one), the actual nitty gritty of it is notably more run of the mill. Well equipped warriors consisting of dwarves, elves, wizards, and rogues finding treasure and hacking through hordes of bad guys.
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| Not what anyone would call a "Small" game... |
If this sounds a little generic, that's because, frankly, it is. We've played this game before, but just because we've played it before, that doesn't mean we don't want to play it again...
Dungeon Crawl Before You Can Dungeon Walk
So, like you'd think, on their turn, players get 3 actions to move, fight, open doors, and pick up loot. Bad guys are divided into 3 different groups: Mobs of baddies, Agents of the darkness, and large Roaming Monsters. As they appear on the board, they come with a random piece of treasure that you hope to heaven they can't use, and they level up at a rate similar to, and sometimes FASTER than, the heroes. But best of all, the amount of health that an enemy has is completely contingent on the number of players in the game. Yes. You read that right. This game has ACTUAL RULES for playing solo, and scales encounters accordingly. YOU HEAR THAT, GHOSTBUSTERS?!?! REAL RULES. Not that "One Person Plays Multiple Characters" crap...
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| Too true... Too true... |
One of the more unique things about this game is the inclusion of Shadow Zones. These are areas on the map where the players can hide in the shadows, and use stealth to their advantage. Either by using some special Shadow Zone specific abilities, or just by hiding, and letting the scarier monsters walk right by them, none the wiser.
If you do find yourself in Combat, it is a fairly streamlined system compared to what I've seen in games like these. Instead of rolling to see how many hits you get, then rolling for Defense, all dice are rolled at once. Those of you out there who have played Descent know how much time that can save. I know it may seem like a small thing, but let me tell you, it was damn near mind-blowing when we first did it.
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| Swords - Shields = PAIN |
Occasionally, a little Bam(?) symbol will appear, or if you get really lucky, a Diamond, and those can be spent like currency to trigger special powers, like adding more Swords to your roll, or removing whole dice that your enemy rolled.
As you take out swaths of enemies, your character will gain the bad guy's stuff, but more importantly, you gain XP! XP can be spent to buy new character skills or use your SIGNATURE ABILITY!!! Your character's Signature Ability is something you can use once per turn, as they supposedly have GAME BREAKING EFFECTS which is why they cost you precious, precious XP. But, just like if you watched me play basketball against anyone, closer inspection of the characters will show you that not all of God's creatures are created equal.
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| Yeah, it's pretty much like that... |
Let's take the Battle Wizard. For the low, low price of 1 XP, the Battle Wizard can turn one of his rolled Diamonds, into 2 Bams. In and of itself, that doesn't do much, but you can use it to trigger some of the Battle Wizard's more advanced skills which require 2 Bams. You know, the ones that you don't have because instead of using XP to buy skills, you're out here using XP to turn Diamonds into Bams!
Let's compare with the Shadow Barbarian. Spend 1 XP to INSTANTLY KILL A MINION. HOW IS THAT FAIR OR BALANCED?!? One character breathes on people to kill them, while another is figuring out the exchange rate between Diamonds and Bams. It's not a Wizard class, it's an accountant class! He shouldn't equip staves or orbs, he should have access to calculators or an abacus!
Overall, I've seen both be useful in certain situations, but that's pretty much what I've seen from all the characters. Everything is useful in the right circumstances, but some circumstances happen much more often than others.
Massive Indeed
When a game company's name stands for "Cool Mini or Not", well, let's just say you'd better have some damn cool miniatures with your game. Massive Darkness does not disappoint. The minis are well sculpted, and the character design has the same cartoony charm as the Zombicide games. I will say this, though... While this was a Kickstarter game and there are some AWESOME KS exclusives out there, the retail version of the game only comes with 6 different Mobs, 3 different Agents, and 6 different Monsters. They look great, but you're going to end up fighting the SAME bad guys A LOT. It's a small thing, but it's still a thing.
My big complaint about the production of this game isn't about the plastics, it's about the cardboard. This game should be called Massive Color Shortage. EVERYTHING IS PURPLE. It's like the Darkness hired Prince (RIP) to be its interior decorator. Where are the reds? The greens? You can't tell me that there's not some goblin wife out there that is harping on her goblin husband to bring home a nice area rug in a neutral tone.
And why do they decorate the tiles with pictures of treasure chests, when there are ACTUAL treasure chest tokens?!? It's not like these are indicators for where to put the treasure chest tokens, or extra treasure to collect. No. They're nothing. Let's take a major gameplay element and use it as decoration! That's like if some of the spaces on a Scrabble board had random letters on them! It makes no sense!
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| Goblins... |
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| And Dwarves... |
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| And Orcs, oh my! |
My big complaint about the production of this game isn't about the plastics, it's about the cardboard. This game should be called Massive Color Shortage. EVERYTHING IS PURPLE. It's like the Darkness hired Prince (RIP) to be its interior decorator. Where are the reds? The greens? You can't tell me that there's not some goblin wife out there that is harping on her goblin husband to bring home a nice area rug in a neutral tone.
And why do they decorate the tiles with pictures of treasure chests, when there are ACTUAL treasure chest tokens?!? It's not like these are indicators for where to put the treasure chest tokens, or extra treasure to collect. No. They're nothing. Let's take a major gameplay element and use it as decoration! That's like if some of the spaces on a Scrabble board had random letters on them! It makes no sense!
Buy It!, Try It!, or Fly It!
Breaking down my ratings system:
Buy It! = Go buy this, right now! It is fantastic and worth your hard earned money!
Try It! = Play it with a friend or at your local game store. You might like it or you might not.
Fly It! = %&#! this game!
I mean, this game knows what it is, and it's not trying to be anything other than that. It's an Ameritrashy, dice chucking good time. It reminds me a lot of Diablo, but in board game form. In fact, that may be the most accurate way to describe it. Something where a group of friends can learn a relatively simple system, kill some bad guys, find cool treasure, level up their characters, shampoo, rinse, and repeat. Add in the Shadow Zone mechanics, where hiding is a LEGITIMATE strategy to the game, and I think you've actually got something pretty unique here.
But let's be honest, over the past few years, CMON Games has slowly turned into the king of the Kickstarter Campaign. From large miniature games like the Zombicide games and Blood Rage to smaller games like the Xenoshift series or Guilds of Cadwallon, with the success of Massive Darkness they have successfully put on almost 30(!) Kickstarter campaigns. I can't even successfully put away 30 pairs of socks (no, seriously, you should ask my wife). Most of these games have a starting price tag of $100, so going after them all, can leave you feeling a little...
So, should you go after Massive Darkness? Lots of miniatures to paint for the price tag, if you're into that sort of a thing, and while I personally have a great time with this game, I realize that there's a lot of randomness here, because it is a dice chucker. That paired along with the relatively simplistic game play may turn off quite a lot of people, but I was not one of them. If you've ever wanted to play a fully cooperative Diablo board game, WITHOUT AN OVERLORD, I don't think it gets better than this...
Buy It! = Go buy this, right now! It is fantastic and worth your hard earned money!
Try It! = Play it with a friend or at your local game store. You might like it or you might not.
Fly It! = %&#! this game!
I mean, this game knows what it is, and it's not trying to be anything other than that. It's an Ameritrashy, dice chucking good time. It reminds me a lot of Diablo, but in board game form. In fact, that may be the most accurate way to describe it. Something where a group of friends can learn a relatively simple system, kill some bad guys, find cool treasure, level up their characters, shampoo, rinse, and repeat. Add in the Shadow Zone mechanics, where hiding is a LEGITIMATE strategy to the game, and I think you've actually got something pretty unique here.
But let's be honest, over the past few years, CMON Games has slowly turned into the king of the Kickstarter Campaign. From large miniature games like the Zombicide games and Blood Rage to smaller games like the Xenoshift series or Guilds of Cadwallon, with the success of Massive Darkness they have successfully put on almost 30(!) Kickstarter campaigns. I can't even successfully put away 30 pairs of socks (no, seriously, you should ask my wife). Most of these games have a starting price tag of $100, so going after them all, can leave you feeling a little...
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| It's Kickstarter season again... |
So, should you go after Massive Darkness? Lots of miniatures to paint for the price tag, if you're into that sort of a thing, and while I personally have a great time with this game, I realize that there's a lot of randomness here, because it is a dice chucker. That paired along with the relatively simplistic game play may turn off quite a lot of people, but I was not one of them. If you've ever wanted to play a fully cooperative Diablo board game, WITHOUT AN OVERLORD, I don't think it gets better than this...
The Verdict....?
TRY IT!
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