Digital supplements to board games have not surprised anyone for a long time. You can treat them in different ways, but you can’t ignore the fact of their presence. Today we are going to talk about one more such board game. A game in which digital technologies are very closely intertwined with cardboard and plastic. Meet the reprint of a once very famous game, which turned 41 this year! Return to dark tower in a review on Crazy Cube.
Indeed, the original Dark tower was released back in 1981 and was met with great interest. Even back then, the set included a large dark tower, which was the cornerstone of the entire board game. The built-in processor allowed to react to the actions of players trying to find the keys to the notorious piece of architecture in order to break in and kick the local archvizlidnya. Even now, when experienced and spoiled board gamers are snorting contemptuously at the throw-and-move mechanics, Dark tower has a respectable 6.9 score on BGG. That’s pretty good, you’ll agree. But relatively recently Restoration games (Donwforce, Thunder road: Vendetta), a company that specializes in reviving classic board games, released a re-release of the 80s hit called Return to dark tower. That’s what I’m going to review and review today.
So, what’s in store for us? As brave adventurers (4 in the base and 2 in the add-on) we go in search of the main quest (now there are several of them, depending on our choice and scenario), while solving simple tasks from the series “collect and bring”. And as soon as the main quest-trigger will be solved, the evil in cardboard flesh will appear on the playing field and we will have to defeat it in (un)equal struggle. And now let’s go through the board in the classic manner from the beginning to the end
Components
As I wrote earlier, Return to dark tower is a very expensive family, very expensive. And the main source of this expensiveness is the tower itself. It’s a big piece of interactive plastic with removable plugs, automatic moving elements, light music and mandatory bluetooth connection to a device with an interactive application. By the way, it consumes a lot of energy. Three batteries with a capacity of 2100 mAh is hardly enough for a full party and a half. So either stock up on rechargeable batteries at once, or be ready to buy mountains of ordinary AA batteries. In addition to this central element in the base is a very good minky heroes, a bunch of cardboard tokens of enemies, warriors and spirits, a lot of cards (some of them almost do not carry any sense) and the playing field. And it all costs $190. Yes, Tower in the Tower gobbles up the most money.
New heroes (two, but they promise more in the next campaign) and quests, a separate box with miniatures (it’s not the Grail, they really are constantly hanging on the field and pleasing to the eye), even a playmat is available. But all this content-cosmetic fun adds another $150 or so to the price. That’s right now, at retail. On pre-order was much cheaper. And I have no complaints about the quality of components. Well, except that the tower can sometimes glitch, but this is a solvable problem. So in total I will say 8/10. Because the filling in the base pulls on 7, and with dopa almost 9. I’ll take an arithmetic average
Lore
For centuries the dark tower has stood in desolation after the overthrow of its master. But evil is not dormant, and its sprouts are once again breaking out here and there in the world of the four kingdoms. Now it is up to the brave heroes to find out who is behind it. Does the new tyrant and usurper intend to subjugate the surrounding lands?
This is a rough outline of what is happening. Approximate, because in fact there is no clear big story around the game. There is an abstract villain, abstract heroes, abstract kingdoms, behind the screen of which there is very little other information. This not-so-pleasant fact is partially compensated for in the course of gameplay, when we get these or those quests, paired with a couple of lines from the alleged mouths of the nondescripts. By God, even Mansions of Madness (abstracting, of course, from Lovecraft and his universe) at the start devote much more time and text to the description of what is happening during the scenario. Here, however, everything is crystal simple and banal, on the level of Howard’s heroic fantasy. “I’m good, he’s bad. Let’s go clean his face!” and so on all the way. No, there are twists and turns, of course. But they do not reveal the plot and the potential of the world in any way. Hence, although a bit sad, it’s a 6/10. And that’s how you could have made a great epic
Gameplay
Return to dark tower is a game purely with the app. You can’t play a single game without it. That’s because the tower (component) plays first fiddle in the gameplay of the tower (boardgame). It triggers events, gives out penalties, changes the conditions of the game. But let’s talk about everything in order.
At the start, we choose our heroes (just take a character sheet, the required components and minka), the scenario, within which the boss and smaller mobs (already in the application). Then we place buildings on the field (4 pieces for each kingdom; they are rigidly tied to the place and their one kind for each game zone – market, village, citadel and sanctuary) and mobs (their locations prompt us again the application), and also mark the point of the main quest-trigger with a stand or minka. For 6 game rounds we must have time to fulfill it and kill the main quest-trigger, which crawls out right at the end of this task. Game on!
The game is divided into round-months, during which all participants are given an average number of moves. On the first round there is strictly one for each of them, and then the application itself decides (based on our actions) how many total moves the players will make. On average this value ranges from 6 to 9 depending on the number of heroes. Plus, at the beginning of each month, except for the first, we get two quests in addition to the axial one: the companion quest (usually allows you to get a companion for the rest of the party) and the enemy quest (if you don’t fulfill it, you can get a hefty penalty).
Each turn is divided into 3 phases. In the first (starting phase) we can perform the action of the banner and just get some plushie characteristic for each character (spirit, war, potion). In the second phase (the middle of the move; yes, damn, the authors banally did not even come up with sound names for them 🤦🏻♂️) we can move (3-4 sectors, but can be doubled for a fee), perform a heroic action (clear the building of skulls, fight with mobs or complete a quest) and activate reinforcements at locations with buildings. And all of this can be mixed. For example, doubled your movement, passed 2 locations, cleared the citadel, then passed three more, called for reinforcements in the village, and moved to another location further to the goal.
Now the nuances, and then we’ll talk about the third phase. If everything is simple with the movement (we go, we don’t slow down anywhere, no one can stop us – neither enemy, nor friend, nor event), then with the others we need to explain.
Heroic actions imply getting a bonus from fulfillment (2 units of spirit), that’s first of all. Secondly, combat and quest (the same action plays out the dungeon) go through the application. In the first case, we select a particular enemy, look at his map, specifically the part where the number of his battle cards is indicated. We randomly click that number of times into the cards offered by the app, and start playing their effects one by one. As a rule, they require spending some amount of warriors, spirit, items and so on. We drop the required from the tablet and move on. In addition, we have access to superiority points (in 6 categories in total, which are also basic characteristics of enemies or conditions of some quests), spending which we can weaken enemy cards, or even get a profit on them. And if we can’t resolve the conditions of a card in any way, we need to get a debuff. There can be no more than two such debuffs (the third automatically triggers a loss and the end of the game). Once the enemy is completely through all the cards, he is considered defeated. Remove his figure from the field and move on. The quest can be divided into the quest itself and the dungeon. With the first is easier: came to the location, in the application selected the required quest, clicked on the button “done” and rejoice. The dungeons are a bit more complicated. We open a new location in which we need to choose different paths-rooms in which events similar to enemy battle maps occur (reset this or that, lose or spend something). Similarly, you can spend superiority points by reducing negative effects. The difference with combat is that you can leave the dungeon at any time and continue exploring it the next turn. And free to do so absolutely any player. Passed rooms will remain as they are, you do not need to spend resources on them again.
The last action option of the second phase is reinforcements. It is available only on locations with buildings, one variant for each. And it can be played both for free and spirit points. Free actions allow you to hire warriors, buy potions, equipment or get spirit. Reinforcements can be used to cleanse yourself of evil, take a treasure, reinforce your character with a new trait (there are only 6 of them at the start, three of which are closed) or hire more warriors. Just as with heroic, only one action is available.
The turn ends with the end phase. This is the moment of the tower’s activity. The player throws a special skull token inside, after which the app tells what is happening and what needs to be done. For example, the skull can immediately fall outside. Then it must be placed on one of the buildings in the kingdom where it appeared. By the way, the limit of skulls on each is 3. The fourth skull destroys the building permanently. Or the app instructs you to remove one of the shutters. Behind it may be a void (an opening for skulls to fall out) or a glyph depicting one of the action options. If such a glyph is placed in front of an active player’s kingdom, the latter will have to pay for the opportunity to perform it. This is not permanent, the tower regularly changes the position of its segments, which means that next turn your party colleague may face something similar.
In addition, the tower triggers events related to mob and boss activity. Once these are completed, a new turn is triggered. If the app thinks you should finish a round, a month change notification pops up. All unfulfilled side quests are considered failed, players receive penalties for them, read the description of new tasks and continue on their way.
If you have completed the quest Glavgada, the application will write what you need to do when the scourge of the human race appears on the playing field. From that moment the main task becomes the total destruction of it. Battles go as well as with ordinary mobs, but the cards at the evil one is stronger by an order of magnitude, he more often hits with kritami. But you can get out of the fight as well, as in the dungeon. Thus, the final mess falls on the shoulders of all adventurers. Divide and conquer, as they say. Once the final boss fight card is resolved, there comes the well-deserved endgame with victory. And we read… the stats of our adventure 🤷♂️. As I said, there is no immersion in the world here as such. If for some reason one of the players gets the third card of profanity, or you have to throw a skull into the Tower and they ran out, or you didn’t manage to finish the boss before the end of the 6th month – you’ve lost. And the Darkness has consumed these lands… Curtain.
Like many ameri, Return to dark tower is full of nuances and variants, but strictly in a family-midcore way. This is not Arkham files from FFG, not Grail or Gloom. Here every event looks like a quite easy task from the series of “serve and fetch”. With proper joint action planning, quests can be accomplished quite easily. The necessary loot is collected collectively, then exchanged between players, if necessary. It is possible to lose, of course. But rather by carelessness and carelessness. Most of the scenario events do not bring strong gameplay shocks, as in the same Mansions of Madness. The whole experience feels like a casual boss fight with preparation. I was immediately reminded of the not-so-successful Sanctum, to be honest. The only difference is that Return to dark tower is a fully cooperative game. However, as a beautiful high-tech board game, the game lives up to its name. Mechanics do not sag, there is no empty action, there will always be something to do. A cooperative sandbox, in a word. Geeks, I’ll tell you right away, there is nothing to do here. For general understanding it’s like comparing Zombicide and Blade and Sorcery. Here Tower is such an expensive and beautiful Zombicide. A simple, unstressful, colorful romp with no pretensions to high crisis. There are no tactical tricks, no complex training, even a boss fight in most cases will be reduced to a timely dumping of accumulated resources. It’s the best thing to play with kids! Especially if you are not afraid of English. Of course, I want to mock the gameplay some more, but still in its category Return to dark tower works perfectly. 7/10 well deserved
Threshold of entry
In principle, the previous section almost completely covered all the nuances. The Tower rules are written in a mediocre way, sometimes confusingly. Sometimes you want to look in the glossary or reference book, which are simply not available. However, with all the other quite bearable to master the Rulebook can be for about 40-45 minutes. Inside the party almost everything is regulated by the appendix. One of the best, it must be said. Not in terms of content or design, but in terms of friendliness to players. It takes over most of the potential feedling, regulates events and behavior of mobs, getting and completing quests. Yes, one is drawn to draw parallels with apps from FFG, for example. They’re good, too. Here and in Tower the digital part is done at a high level. And everything else (basic mechanics and nuances) is quite easy to memorize and play. The biggest difficulty is exactly in the English language. But if at least one person in the cell is able to read the basic text, no one will have problems. This is where Tower is asking for an 8/10, which I will do
Replayability
Return to dark tower, unlike the original, has a dozen scenarios (with dopes, of course), the same number of bosses and mobs. All of them are mixed into a bizarre hodgepodge at the start of the party. This means that wagering the same scenario will go a little differently each time. Like in Mansions of Madness, for example (what can I do, I’m comparing it to it again). You potentially get at least half a dozen different adventures lasting from one and a half to four hours (depending on the number of participants), and maybe even two dozen. So there is a lot of room for replayability. Of course, the small number of heroes (6, if with dopom) is very disappointing. Yes, and their customization is mediocre enough (of the 6 unique traits only 3 will be locked at the start; open them even in one party is easy), especially coupled with a small variety of loot. The quest presets are mostly the same, as I’ve mentioned many times in the text. Which means gameplay will be somewhat routine from party to party. If this doesn’t scare you, then Return to dark tower is capable of working out its potential to 7/10 exactly
Price/quality
Here’s where things get a little less rosy. Even if we assume that you get into the gameplay and ignore some cyclicality of tasks and content of the base, the average cost of one party will be somewhere in 24 dollars (based on 10 parties). There and the cost of the box at the moment, and the price of delivery through the forwarder. Additional content in the form of characters, villains and quests (Alliances, if I’m not mistaken) will cost another 35 dollars. Minky and playmat consciously do not include, it is pure cosmetics, and not cheap. At the exchange rate, please translate yourself. But at the time of writing this article, the Russian price tag of one roll will be almost 1400 rubles. For comparison, 10 batches of basic Mansions of Madness will cost 900 rubles. And there the crisis rate is two heads higher. And there is no guarantee that you will pass each of even the basic scenarios. Of course, we’re not talking about Mansions being better. In this context, another FFG game, Lord of the Rings Wanderings in Middle-earth, is even cooler and cheaper (14-16 scenarios in the base at a box price of 9k without discounts). It’s just that the gameplay and crisis level of Mansions is higher, as is the replayability. In my opinion, of course. That’s why I would give Return to dark tower 6/10 in terms of price/quality ratio. Still, for family gameplay the price of the board game is very high, potentially even unjustified
Conclusion
Final score from Crazy Cube 7/10
Return to dark tower is a beautiful, midcore Ameri-family game. As a person who is closer to the geek segment, I can recommend it to unsophisticated board gamers whose gaming experience is on the level of the same Zombicide, who expects from gameplay adventures and fun in the spirit of Talisman (with add-ons, of course, not only basic), but wants to reach a new level of experience. Fantasy fans of various ages will also find fertile ground. Again, unless you’re a geek and have a sizable wallet. For me personally, I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to fit into the new print run that starts in the coming weeks. On the one hand, I see something very vulgar and casual. On the other hand, I have a son growing up, who may like Return to dark tower at least visually, both in appearance and game mechanics