The path through the great and mysterious Shuffle Dungeon is never easy, but it can be pleasantly straightforward. Well, if you consider a dungeon where rooms keep moving, spinning, and sliding around to be straightforward. Designed by a team led by Jeremy Stark with art by Isaac Serafini and published by Zero Strategy Games, Shuffle Dungeons is a fun dungeon exploration game for 1-4 players ages 12 and above.

It’s important to note that the company sent me a late-stage prototype to play and enjoy, so while the art is almost finalized, every picture is subject to change, and the Rules of Play were definitely in process, with blank sections waiting to be replaced by completed artwork and iconography. It’s also worth mentioning that solo play is dual-hand, where you’re controlling two adventurers, not one. There’s no automata, no AI, no companion app. Not to worry, the game’s intended to be fast and simple so playing two characters was pretty easy. It’s a cooperative game where everyone starts at different points in the unexplored dungeon, but eventually joins forces to defeat the dungeon boss and escape!

Shuffle Dungeons is comprised of 8 heroes, 7 bosses (with varying difficulty depending on the number of adventurers in the party), and 86 square, two-sided dungeon tiles, a mix of monster cards, armor/wand cards, weapon/trap cards, spell/shrine cards, and snack/corridor cards. There are also small heart-shaped health tokens and eight 6-sided dice, 4 each of two different colors. Let’s jump in as I go head-to-head with a dungeon boss…

BASIC SETUP AND COMPONENTS

The designers have come up with a really fun setup mechanism that avoids the usual problem of a poorly spaced, sparse grid: You begin by selecting a boss (with the number of lock icons on the card matching the number of players), then place three cards outward in rectilinear lines towards each of the 2-4 players (solo play has two adventurers), each ending with a dungeon entrance tile. Here’s my initial setup:

In the above you can see the two heroes at the end of the two arms of the dungeon have special cards and hero tokens, the dungeon boss in the center is the tile with the red back, three dungeon tiles, and the starting tiles (3-way corridors with a green border). Along the top are the shuffled tiles stack, green and blue quick reference cards, health tokens in one of my bowls, and the eight dice, ready for combat. Once this is all laid out on the table, each character picks up the three cards in their row and that becomes their starting hand.

One of my two adventurers is Scout, and you can see that the matching token is already a bit worse for wear, typical of prototype games. The Scout has three important numbers along the edge and a power on the bottom. An attack of 2 with one die (the crossed swords icon), 2 health (the, umm, herald symbol?), and movement of three. The special power is that the Scout gains a +2 to their attacks if they are in a Trap dungeon room, which is significant.

Dungeon tiles are generally shown path up, but remember that each has two sides, so the hero can choose to play it as a corridor to expand the dungeon or they can use the special power or ability on the obverse. Here are three starting tiles, two flipped to their special power sides:

Left to right, the Spell tile allows the player to rotate a room adjacent to the current room (critical to avoid broken paths), the center tile is the Iron Maiden Trap room: Upon entering the room, the hero rolls one die, adds their speed, and if it’s greater than the indicated value (in this instance, “6”), they get the white success benefit: Heal 1. Failure leads to the black result: Halt, which immediately ends your turn even if you have additional movement available.

The third tile shown is a potion, called “Snacks” in the game, and they are use-once any time objects, even usable by another hero, adding +3 to any roll. This can be a make or break for an attack, so it’s a great item to keep in your hand. Your max hand size is three, however, so you can’t easily stack up these benefits. There’s some balance needed: If you just hold on to good items, you’ll never be able to explore and expand the dungeon!

Some cards offer the ability to buff your hero, and they’re great because you immediately play them so they don’t consume a slot in your hand. For example, the left Snack below is useful, but the Harpoon of Slaying card is great, adding a +3 to every attack:

These cards often have confusing and somewhat cryptic iconography too, and the right side of the Harpoon indicates in symbols what’s fortunately also explained in the text: if you’re on a slain monster tile in the dungeon, you can assist any other hero in a combat regardless of their location. Usually, you can only assist heroes when you’re in the same region (e.g., connected room tiles). Whether you ever use the bonus unlock capability, that +3 on combat is a big win and this is a weapon you’ll immediately deploy. You can also have an armor and a spell, fully buffing your hero and ensuring they’re reading for the dungeon boss.

Here are a few other heroes, the Jester, Pitman, and Incinerator. Remember that, clockwise starting on the top right, the numbers are health, movement, special power, and attack power.

PLAYING THE GAME

Setup is quite fast, particularly if you store the game so that all the tiles are path side up (more thoughtful use of color coding could help with this process). Let’s jump into the game! Each hero can do any or all of: Move your specified range, draw new tiles equal to the number of exits from your current room, play cards, use a card’s power, trade cards with other players in the same room, or attack a monster!

My starting move will have me deploying two items, placing a corridor, and then moving into that corridor:

Since I’m in a room with three exits, I end my turn by drawing three cards. That’s max hand size, so it’s the next player’s turn. The monsters never take their own turn so they’re ultimately more defensive than offensive (though if you are in their territory, you can’t avoid the encounter). The other player begins to build out their hero and dungeon area and it’s Scout’s turn again, and this time a Monster shows up.

Important: A monster “shows up” by being one of the tiles that this hero drew. They have to be played immediately once drawn, but I have confidence that with my items I’m ready to rumble. Monsters are placed in a space adjacent to the hero, but the encounter isn’t triggered until the hero moves into an impacted space, as denoted by the black/red grid on the monster card (red = active territory). In the below, I’ve moved the Scout back one space so we’re in the active zone!

The monster is a Baby Mud Drake and while it has an attack of 10, it only attacks with a single die, allowing the player a good chance to defeat it. Generally, we’ll both roll one or more dice, then add attack values to figure out who wins the skirmish. In this instance, the green is the player and the red is the monster. The Scout has a base attack of 2 + 5 for the Bearded Axe, plus 5 on the dice roll = 12. The monster has an attack of 10 plus 2 on their die = 12. The player wins a tie so we hit it for one damage. But it only has 1 health (the number on the top right of the monster card) so we defeat it! Once a monster is defeated, it’s flipped over and becomes a four-entrance room in the dungeon.

Further along in the game, things have shifted around (as they do in Shuffle Dungeons) and the heroes have managed to connect their dungeon paths! This means that additional heroes can “assist” in battle, giving the active player additional attack dice:

The connection proves a bit of a lull…

FURTHER INTO THE GAME

It doesn’t take much time for another monster to show up, but this time the adventurers are in the same space:

Remember, check the 3×3 grid on the monster card to see which adjacent spots are affected. In this case, the heroes are in a spot affected by the heinous and terrifying Witcheroo with an attack of 4 (plus two dice), health of 2, and treasure of 2. Treasure? Yes, every monster shows up with a stash of dungeon tiles underneath them; defeat the monster, and the new tiles are recovered by the hero.

Those two dice are tricky, but since the heroes are in the space space, one can easily assist the other. Down side? If the attack fails, the injuries of the counterattack (as denoted by the tiny hearts on the monster card) are spread across heroes. First things first, however, the monster and hero tiles swap to make the dungeon just a bit more chaotic. No worries, though, the Vulture has an attack of 3, plus they have the Harpoon with its +3 and a Snack that offers a +3 to any roll…

The Witcheroo has an attack of 4 + 9 (4 + 5, the red dice) = 13, against the Vulture with an attack of 3 + 3 for the Harpoon, plus 6 (1 + 5, the green dice) = 12. Oh no! But wait! If we quickly quaff the Precision Juice we’ll get a +3, turning that 12 into a 15 and a defeat into a win! One hit against the Witcheroo (who has two health), but Scout has a plan…

By playing the Swole Shake, the hero deals 1 extra damage. Result: We kill the pesky monster. Done deal. Woot!

FINALLY, THE DUNGEON BOSS MONSTER

This combination of exploration, dungeon tile manipulation, and monster fights continues until the heroes make it to the center of the dungeon and trigger the boss monster:

The final boss is the Loot Lizard, who has an attack 6 plus two dice, health of 4, and does three damage to the attacking hero or heroes on each skirmish win. They also bounce around the dungeon, so the heroes will need to follow them to finish the attack and turn ’em into mincemeat.

For our final move, the Scout attacks with the help of Vulture. Loot Lizard already has 3 damage so this roll proves enough to defeat them and trigger a win:

Handily done without either hero collapsing (if a hero gets to zero health, they lose all their cards, items, and equipment, but then resurrect in the same spot). Game over. Elapsed time about 45 minutes.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON SHUFFLE DUNGEONS

There’s a lot I like about Shuffle Dungeons, actually, because the entire mechanism of flipping over unknown cards to expose the area is very appealing. You’re never really surprised by what’s revealed, however, because you always have the opportunity to decide what cards to play and whether to play them on the path side or the obverse, as an item, snack, spell, etc. Because I played with a prototype take the following comments with a grain of salt: Many of them will be resolved with the production game. However, the iconography was confusing and inconsistent. There are competing color messages too, with pink denoting traps and denoting a specific type of item. The worst was the in-process directions that covered about 70% of what’s needed to have the confidence that you’re playing correctly.

As with many games, it’s also easy to forget nuances and subtleties, particularly when they vary on a per-card basis. It wasn’t until I was writing up this review that I realized the dungeon boss should have been moving after each skirmish it won, something I didn’t actually do in the above playthru. The dual-sided cards were interesting, but they ended up being quite busy and it’s confusing to have that many options in your hand, particularly after you pick up additional cards as part of your turn. For a company called Zero Strategy Games, this particular game requires some thoughtful planning and strategy to ensure you’re strong enough later.

Overall, I would assess this as a solid dungeon explorer with some rough edges that will hopefully be smoothed out in final production. It’s quick to set up, easy enough for younger gamers to join the fun, and nicely coop in it requiring players to bridge their individual dungeon paths so they can collaborate on the final boss attack. Definitely worth checking out!

Shuffle Dungeons, published by Zero Strategy Games. $29.00. Back it on Kickstarter between 8/6/24 and 9/5/24 then at the Zero Strategy Games site.

Disclosure: Zero Strategy Games sent me a prototype of the game in return for this candid review.