Escape the Dark Castle

£34.99

Are you ready to work together as a team in a fantasy choose-your-own-adventure-style game and defeat the final boss to escape the Dark Castle? Themeborne has created an immersive story-based game that sees you work with your fellow prisoners to skillfully manoeuvre through each chapter card and (hopefully) escape the Dark Castle alive. Now I’ll be honest, before this game I was on the fence about fantasy, adventure-style games – however, I think Escape the Dark Castle may have fully converted me. It's easy to get the hang of, left largely up to the fate of a dice roll, and as soon as the game ended…I was dying to play it again! 

Straight out of the box, the game was easy to set up. First, you and your fellow players get to choose from 6 characters to play as. Each player has their own character card showing their skill level in terms of the game's three key skills – wisdom, cunning and might. These skills vary for each character, and so everyone gets their own individual dice representative of these qualities which adds a nice immersive touch to the game. Therefore, you and your fellow players might decide to choose your characters strategically with a mix of qualities for the best balance of skills to get through each chapter card and defeat the final boss. You then choose 15 cards at random from the 45 given chapter cards, and one of the three final boss cards. These are stacked in a deck in the middle of the players with the start card on top, then the 15-chapter cards and finally the boss card at the bottom.

To play you simply flip over the start card and then you are led through the game. With each of the 15 randomly chosen chapter cards you may have to roll dice to defeat creatures, or maybe you’ll have to make a team decision on how you want to progress, or maybe you’ll be given new challenges that add to the narrative of the game. This is what makes every game of Escape the Dark Castle so unique as you never know what each card will bring. In some instances when combat is required, the chapter card will outline what is needed to defeat that particular scary-looking figure – this is where having a great balance of skills is useful, as some need more of one skill than another to be defeated!

As you go through each chapter you can choose who gets to flip over and read out the card to the rest of the group. This has two great qualities to it; firstly, flipping the cards over gives a story narrative feel to the gameplay - especially when they are read out with a dramatic tone as we did when I sat down to play this with some friends. The second great aspect of the card story narrative is that whoever flips over and reads out the card may face some sort of consequences which may leave them disadvantaged for that chapter. Therefore, each chapter becomes its own unique mini-game which must be overcome as a team before you meet the final boss.

As you go through each game you keep track of your health on the provided notepad, whilst also collecting items as outlined on the chapter cards. These items are great in helping you fight some deadly figures or keep you or your fellow prisoners alive in dire moments. In some combats, players can even rest for a round to regain some health whilst the other players battle alone. Resting is crucial to the strategic play of the game because if one of you dies, you have failed to escape and the game ends. Therefore, a big element of Escape the Dark Castle is keeping your team alive!

When I sat down to play Escape the Dark Castle with some friends, I was very impressed with the overall quality of it. Every single card, each one much larger than your average playing card, has been thoroughly designed with the game’s immersive choose-your-own-adventure style in mind. However, I think it was the artwork across the game that is the real stand out - each chapter card and boss are perfectly gruesome or ghastly which really adds to the overall feel of the game.

Overall, I would highly recommend this to any tabletop game enthusiast as it is a great game to play with friends due to its brilliant immersive quality. However, I’d also highly recommend it to those who are just stepping their toe into the world of tabletop gaming. It’s a perfect beginner-friendly game that relies largely on the luck of a dice roll whilst remaining incredibly captivating throughout. I feared it might be hard to grasp having not played a game like this before, however, within a few minutes I was cheering when we finally completed each chapter alive. I thoroughly enjoyed playing the game, and, as a team we got all the way to the final boss card after almost losing players to some fearsome figures. However, in facing the final boss, we were no match having lost too much life over the chapters, and as one player died…we were trapped in the Dark Castle forever.

So…I couldn’t Escape the Dark Castle…but can you?

Pros:

- Easy to play and set up

- Immersive gameplay where every game is different

- Larger card size with incredible artwork

(Also - If you are a fan of The Last of Us, Themeborne have developed The Last of Us: Escape the Dark tabletop game which is available for preorder now!)