Dungeon Crawlers

Many of my favourite board games are underground fantasy dungeon crawlers. These usually feature revealing board tile exploration or objective scenarios, random events and miniatures, with progressive character development. These games often require painting or modelling to look their best and are as much about a hobby as playing them. Over the years i have bought and sold games, aiming to paint and keep the best sets, and there is little to separate my top selections :​​

1. Silver Tower (2016) / Hammerhal (2017) / Blackstone (2018) / Cursed City (2021) – Games Workshop Warhammer Quest remade in a series of box sets each based on a new theme. It begun with Silver Tower, where heroes are summoned to recover parts of a lost talisman, exploring rooms, encountering events and defeating monsters, with actions triggered by allocating rolled dice into hero action slots. Shadows over Hammerhal has a more traditional underground dungeon theme, with Blackstone Fortress being more ranged combat and skirmish orientated, set in the futuristic world on a huge spaceship. My favourite version is the undead theme of Cursed City. The series is light on rules and simple to teach and play, and while these are beaten elsewhere on overall gameplay strategy, they are for me the best hobby modelling & miniatures dungeon crawl sets needing assembling and painting. My more detailed overviews > Cursed City and a comparison of the others > Silver Tower v Hammerhal v Blackstone Fortress

2. Descent 2nd Edition (2012) / Descent Legends of the Dark (2021) – Fantasy Flight Descent is a famous dungeon crawl brand set in the world of Terrinoth which continues its development from the original, onto the great 2nd Edition and then Legends of the Dark. This fantasy co-operative game is a campaign adventure driven using an app with interlinking storylines where your adventuring heroes will undertake missions, develop their skills, abilities and improving their armour and weapons over time. This series majors on adventure and exploration revealing a hidden journey, and is fun but not too complex to play. The 2nd edition comes with more game modes than Legends, from solo with an app to competitive overlord v heroes play. Components are excellent, and Legends has great miniatures snf three dimensional terrain, and is my most versatile exploration dungeon crawl. My more detailed overviews > Descent Legends of the Dark and Descent 2nd Edition

3. Sword & Sorcery (2017) / Ancient Chronicles (2021) – Ares A co-operative fantasy adventure and dungeon crawler with a story driven campaign and automated monster intelligence. It features great miniatures, with enemy monsters groups having different poses and colours to change their response intelligence, and game tiles are excellent, split into larger areas than usual, with an easy to use line of sight system. There are many great ideas in this game, heroes can be lawful, neutral or chaos in alignment, have alternative choices of powers to select with cooldown timers for the better skills, and soulpoints gained as experience to level up or recover a hero if defeated. Adventures are pre-written with ongoing secret storyline to read out, and it is interactive and engaging to play, and is the best dungeon crawl for rules depth and deeper enemy intelligence. My more detailed overview > Sword & Sorcery

4. Warhammer Quest (1995) – Games Workshop A miniatures co-operative dungeon quest with great character development, where monsters, encounters, traps and treasure await. This game has impressive content and models, and is the early benchmark game for the dungeon crawl experience, with random dungeon lay outs, exploration and monster spawns and the opportunity to level up in the town at the end of the adventure to obtain new skills. It’s large box featured creatures such bats, spiders and rats and does not depend on having a dungeon overlord player to play against the heroes. This old favourite features relatively simple missions and mechanics, lovely floor tiles and a comprehensive bestiary and roleplay book, which remains unbeaten by any similar game since. It remains my best entry level dungeon crawler. Here is my overview and expansion guide > Warhammer Quest

5. Altar Quest (2020) – Blacklist A miniatures dungeon questing game where heroes will search a series of rooms for an underground altar. It’s overall design pays homage to HeroQuest, particularly with its board and room features to interact with. The game is modular designed, and in each adventure you can select different card decks for your heroes, villains, threat and your quest, to create a unique adventure. The production quality is excellent, with good models and neat room objects and nice artwork, and each hero card deck is unique enough to create an individual character. Magical altar rhunes energy will constantly change, bringing extra abilities in and out of play during the game, and the action test dice feel full of positives. The game also scales really well for player count and is playable solo too. I consider it my best card gameplay dungeon crawl. My more detailed overview > Altar Quest

6. Bardsung (2022) – Steamforged A narrative dungeon crawler based on a hobgoblin theme. This huge box is beautifully presented with great artwork, tiles, game trays and enemies with some real personality to them. The adventure book is large and offers a lot of missions including a long campaign and individual story driven adventures and boss fights. Hero characters have path options to follow for skill upgrades, and the game is generally driven by a 20 sided dice rolling mechanic. This is a middle ground dungeon crawler with a great presentation, going a little deeper on rules than entry level but not as complex as campaign games like Gloomhaven and Sword & Sorcery. It is also scale-able for different player counts and has a solo character play option. This is a really accessible crawler, strong on personality and customisation, with usually a shorter play time, and is my favourite d20 dungeon crawler. My more detailed overview > Bardsung

Previously Owned Alternative Fantasy Dungeon Crawlers… due to space and funding restrictions i regularly trade out games to fund and try newer ones, producing an ever changing favourites list, but one of these games may be right for you …

Chronicles of Drunagor (2021) – a good looking dungeon crawler with an undead and abomination miniatures theme, a nice cube allocation mechanic for actions and d20 rolling. Comes with plastic trays to hold the tiles and interractions with a picture book. Using d20 is common to the Dungeons & Dragons series and Bardsung, with the latter game being my preferred choice to keep.

Shadows of Brimstone (2014-2023) – an alternative themed dungeon crawler which bears a close relation to the original Warhammer Quest in its randomised gameplay style and character development, visiting towns between adventures > Shadows of Brimstone

Dungeons & Dragons (2011-2019) – a six game series of lighter entry level co-operative dungeon crawls, where simple 20 sided dice mechanics allow you play against randomised dungeons and encounters. Great for newcomers > Dungeons & Dragons

Darklight Memento Mori (2018) – randomly generated dungeon crawler with more of a horror theme and a slightly larger scale to models and tiles. Has very similar mechanics to the original Warhammer Quest & Shadows of Brimstone but has balance design flaws especially around critical hits

Ravage : Dungeons of Plunder (2018) – a smaller box dungeon crawl and a reasonably quick game for its type, featuring Orc characters as the main heroes. This is standee based and uses standard size card stock as dungeon tiles, making it a more compact, cheaper game > Ravage

Massive Darkness (2017) – a co-operative dungeon crawl with huge miniature count and quirky artwork style, that lays out a co-operative quest mission before you start. Gameplay has downsides though, particularly within balancing, treature collection, campaign structure and lack of story events > Massive Darkness

Dungeon Saga (2015) – competitive overlord v heroes play style gameplay, this series has a nice book style box and decent enough models. Dice combat is well implemented, and the campaign seems good but overall i felt it was better owning Descent 1st or 2nd edition.

Mice & Mystics (2012) – a more family orientated crawler playing as mice heroes with co-operative pre-written story scenarios. It is an immersive story game with a nice family friendly theme but light on rules, and is a recommend with younger gamers.

Heroquest (1989/2021) – the early original overlord v heroes games which set a standard for years. In the end was replaced for me by the first Warhammer Quest and Descent, albeit it has now been revisited, expanded and revamped production wise.