Daniel (@dungeondive) walks through ten qualities he keeps gravitating toward when sizing up a dungeon crawl or adventure game — not a checklist, not a scorecard, but a way for new viewers to calibrate his taste before the next round of top-10 lists drops later in the year. He stresses the point twice: a game can hit three of these and still be a favourite, or hit nine and miss him entirely.
The ten, in order: solo playability (no need for official solo rules — Talisman and Runebound qualify); unthrottled access to the whole box from turn one, including the chance to die on the first loot draw; character-arc campaigns over pre-scripted Gloomhaven-style narrative books; encounter variety beyond pure combat; simplicity over complexity — a soft confession that Dungeon Universalis is too much game for the channel cadence; one-and-done zero-to-hero sessions in 1–3 hours; aesthetics, with affection for both classic Arkham art and the bolder lines of Dungeon Degenerates; ease of setup and storage (small room, no coffin boxes, no fifteen-box Kickstarter towers); a sense of discovery, with Vantage and Sleeping Gods held up as the modern bar; and interesting character choices — loot and skills that change how you play, not just plus-ones.
Daniel frames this as a reviewer-calibration video rather than a list of necessities. Which of his ten would you swap out, and what’s the criterion that matters most to you that didn’t make his cut?