Image source: Phase Shift Games
The campaign for Dungeon Drop’s upcoming expansion “Dropped Too Deep” finished on Oct. 9 with over $285,000 in funding from over 3,920 backers (full disclosure: I am one of them). The original Dungeon Drop released in early 2020 and was met with enough enthusiasm that Phase Shift Games fired up another one.
Fast Facts about Dungeon Drop
- Players accommodated: 1-4
- Stated play time: 10-20 minutes
- Lower age limit: Box says 8, community says 6
- Rulebook length: 8 small pages
- MSRP: $22
The expansion adds rules for a fifth player and a co-op mode, both additions fans have been clamoring for. It also adds new Huge monster options; race, class, and quest cards; and two new types of cube: forbidden pillars and armor cubs.
It very intentionally does not come with significantly more cubes, which may surprise Kickstarter fans used to doubling their content.
“We don’t want to just throw more cubes in the box because that will increase the probability that key stuff like the magic shield might not come into play, “explained Scott Smith in a video on YouTube.
Furthermore, Smith didn’t want there to be a different number of cubes needed for various player counts.
“We were concerned that if we solved 5-player mode by simply adding more normal cubes like gold to the box, that we create more setup trouble for players: trying to figure out, you know, do I have the 5-player cubes in? Do you need to count them all to tell? We didn’t want a lot of extra setup trouble, it’s been very important to us that Dungeon Drop was always a quick and easy game to set up and play,” he explained.
In addition, the Kickstarter campaign added an option for a bigger box to hold the game and all the pieces of the dungeon superstructure. Originally, the idea was that you would pour the cubes onto the table. When they started flying everywhere, Phase Shift released a Dungeon Mat, which would cushion the cubes as they fell and theoretically solve the issue.
The fix partially worked, but cubes could still fly off the mat. So Phase Shift released another component fix: the Dungeon Walls.
These cardboard walls created a perimeter around the mat to prevent cubes from sliding off the edge. They also meant players could flick cubes off the walls to try to do a ricochet—fantastic.
Furthermore, with the mat and walls, the game looked significantly more like a dungeon when set up than an abstract pattern of cubes lying on a table did. Fans seemed seemed to like the additions, but storage became an issue since the original Dungeon Drop box is merely 4″x4″x4″.
So, in the Kickstarter campaign, Phase Shift offered a new storage solution that would hold both the original box, the expansion, and both parts of the dungeon superstructure.
Dungeon Drop is like a dungeon crawler reduced to its most essential characteristics. Players invade “rooms” that contain monsters, treasure, etc., and those have different effects on them once you’ve chosen the room. Then it’s the next player’s turn to pick a room. It takes less than half an hour to play, and as the designer noted, setup is pretty easy (you pour the box of cubes out onto the table).
The Kickstarter campaign also doubled as a promotion for Phase Shift’s other new game, Tavern Tales. This 2-5 player card game doesn’t interact with the Dungeon Drop game, but is ostensibly in the same universe.
If you are interested in purchasing Dungeon Drop, please consider patronizing your friendly local game store to support them in this challenging economic time.
