Mini Rogue

Inspired by the dungeon crawling of role-play classics such as Dungeons and Dragons (as well as numerous board games) Mini Rogue sees one or two players explore the subterranean depths of caves, monsters, traps, as well as the occasional helpful encounter. Your goal? To find and capture Og’s Blood, a mythical gemstone, guarded by none other than the ghost of Og himself. You can play as one of numerous adventurer types, each with their own special abilities, and track your experience (XP) health (HP) armour, food and gold on your player board; each element having its own, sometimes critical, uses.

It sounds like an epic undertaking, and thematically it is. But Mini Rogue is relatively breezy game that takes 30 minutes solo, and only a little longer with two.

Each level of the dungeon (-there are ten) is represented by cards dealt randomly from the deck into a 3×3 grid, with the bottom-right representing the objective (and as such, this space is filled by special monster cards). At the start of the game you ‘arrive’ in the top left card, ‘resolve’ it, and then can move either rightwards or down, so you are always progressing to that bottom-right destination.

Resolving sounds a little nebulous, but most of the cards are reasonably straightforward, and involve skill checks: rolling dice to see how you do. You begin with one white character die, but can add more (up to three maximum) by improving your adventurer’s XP. A successful skill check, generally speaking, gives you good stuff: more XP, more health, gold, food… maybe even potions to use. An unsuccessful skill check and you’re at the mercy of the black dungeon die: occasionally harmless, or even good, but often problematic: simply follow the chart on the card to see what happens, before – if you’re still breathing – you move on. Some for instances: you might find treasure, trade with merchants, share a meal with hermit and – not least – fight the odd monster.

Fighting is pretty straightforward too: more dice-rolling and damage dealing on the part of both sides. You get to attack first, so if you defeat the monster you’ll take no damage. If you do take damage, this will be in the form of your health points dropping – hopefully not to zero!

At four of the ten dungeon levels, there is a ‘boss monster’ to face. Assuming you defeat them, a new ‘level’ of cards are dealt, and you begin again top-left, consuming food to sustain you and refreshing your special abilities if they have been used. At the final card of level ten, you face off against Og himself, who – not unreasonably – wants to hang on to his precious gem. Do you care?! No, you’re a swashbuckling adventurer, born to hurl dice and cry in triumph!

Or possibly despair.