I love my giant campaign crawlers (Frosthaven, Drunagor, etc), which I play solo, but I need some lighter fare I can bring out at family gatherings. Back when I played in a regular gaming group I played more of types: worker placement, hand management, etc. I’ve played so many worker placement Euro style games they all feel similar to me, I don’t really have much desire to do those.
So, I’m looking to bring something accessible to the table, that takes no more than 90 minutes (including rule explanation). Given this is the Dungeon Dive forum, I thought I’d see if folks have any recommendations in the crawler category? Or crawler themed?
I am not sure I have a useful recommendation either way, but by way of initial clarification: When you say crawler-adjacent are you more concerned with holding onto crawly themes or crawly mechanisms?
Without knowing the answer, here are 3 ideas that come to mind for questionable reasons that I’ll only try to vaguely gesture at (and which you may not find compelling). I’m starting pretty far away from core crawlers, I reckon.
CloudAge (2020): presented in a way friendly to eurogamers, and possibly too euro for you. But it has lite campaign stuff, has some deckbuilding, arguably has some hints at character (ship) progression, “Looty” mechanics, and (somewhat superfically) hex maps. Chancey cards instead of chancey dice.
CLANK! 'nuff said.
Pathfinder the Adventure Card Game. I haven’t played it and can’t vouch fot it, but see some recent discussion starting here in the “What’s on your table?” thread.
Cryptid is pretty cool and works well with 3 to 5 players.
You are all trying to find where a particular monster is hiding.
Each of you knows one piece of information that is true about where the monster is. You only have a couple of actions that you can take: (1) Ask a specific player if the monster could be on a certain hex. They will answer with No or Maybe (based on their clue) and you will have to reveal a location where the monster could NOT be (based on your clue). (2) Perform a Search on a specific hex: Going clockwise around the table, each player will indicate No or Maybe (based on their clues) until the first player says “No”. Then you will have to reveal a location where the monster could NOT be (again, based on your clue).
If ALL of the other players say “Maybe”, then you have found the monster since you are only going to search where it COULD be (based on your clue).
There are some more advanced ways to play and an expansion if you really get into it.
I’d suggest the D&D adventure board games (Castle of Ravenloft etc). They play well as a one shot, rules are easy to grasp especially if one player (you) is running the game, laying down tiles, explaining anything that comes up etc.
It looks good on the table, it’s puzzly and I find a pretty solid co-op with lots of table talk. It should play under 90 min.
Mostly the theme of exploration and conquering the bad guys, grabbing loot, etc. I definitely don’t want a party game. Waaaaay back in the day, there was a game called Dungeon, I think it had a reprint maybe 10 years ago, that fits. Not a particularly good game and perhaps overly light, but it hits the theme and playtime. I’ll have to check out Castle Ravenloft someone else mentioned.
I have played Clank in Space, that’s a good recommendation. I forgot about clank. I’ll check out CloudAge, that looks sort of cool.
Some worker placement/euro can be fun, I just find pure working placement sort of abstract and dry mathematical exercises. Lords of Waterdeep falls into that category as nothing about the mechanics actually feels like I’m managing adventurers or planning battles. For me, the theme is completely pasted on top of a math game (and I’m good at math, but I don’t enjoy it as games).
I didn’t like Escape the Dark Sector. It felt like we were on rails.
The DnD dungeon crawl board games fit the bill but can feel a little on rails. Zombicide and Massive Darkness fit the bill but I found MD overly fiddly and no fun. Zombicide is said to be too hard by some.
Better I think are Last Night on Earth, Claustrophobia, which is OOP, or better yet Arena the Contest which has a relatively short play time and feels like DnD because it’s 4th Edition reskinnedband has a TON of fun content. That’s my recommendation.
Massive Darkness 2 is fantastic and improves quite a bit from the first. One of my favorite if not my favorite one off crawlers.
Doria is fantastic too as a one off, and CMD as well.
Claustrophobia is good but it really is better off as a 1vs1 game as it was designed to be.
The D&D games are really good for quick light crawls, you can even combine them for a good Hexcrawl.
Bag of Dungeon 1 and 2 are decent, my kids love Karak but that is super light but its not terrible if you want something to play with your kids.
If you don’t mind using an app Imperial Assault and Descent 2nd edition are some good fairly light crawls.
I would say one of my favorites though is HeroQuest with the Axian Quest decks. Nothing really beats that for ease of access mixed with some “home brew” content that works great solo or in a group who want a beer and pretzels like crawl.
Heroquest very strongly seconded, but if you want your playtime to be 90 minutes, you are going to have to choose very small dungeons or create something yourself.
A cheaper alternative to Axian Is broadsword, available on drive-through… It takes the hair request system and expands it into hopefully featured light RPG… and it comes with a lot of fun cards, including AI cards for the monsters and some rules to generate dungeons on the fly so you can play cooperatively.
the newer Clank Catacombs is really great and gives a little sense of adventure and exploration with the way the tiles come out and are placed. I thought I would miss the art and design of the static boards, but honestly Catacombs adds such great elements even in the base game.
Its my favorite deckbuilder too, its just so streamlined and effective and never overstays its welcome.
While not a game for noob non-gamers, its definitely on the lower end of the scale for gamers.
How is it compared to Clank in Space (which I’ve played a few times)? There are so many Clank games, I sort of figured it was like Monopoly variants: reskin of the same game.
