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Quick Look: Lord of Loot – an addictive co-op fantasy board game

Designer: Philipp K. Berger
Publisher: PKB Games
Year Published: Live on Kickstarter! (Link at bottom of Review)

No. of Players: 1-5

Ages: 6+

Playing Time: 45 minutes.

Find more info HERE.

From the Publisher:

Disclaimer: The publisher provided the prototype copy of Lord of Loot – an addictive co-op fantasy board game. The opinions expressed in the review are completely my own.

Review:

I am usually not the type of person to judge a book by its cover, but Lord of Loot proved to be an exception ; as soon as I saw the depiction of a group of adventurers fighting a giant cat, I knew I had to give the game a try, mainly because my 7 year old has an obsession with all things cats. It didn’t matter necessarily what kind of game it was, as long as it had a cat in it.

Thankfully, as it turns out, the game is also fully cooperative, meaning I would not have any problem getting my wife, who is almost always adverse to competitive games, to play, along with my other child.

Designed to be family friendly, when I agreed to partake in reviewing the prototype for Lord of Loot (note that as a prototype, things are subject to change in the final version), I immediately began to sift through the digital rule book to gauge the games’ ease of use at a glance. What I discovered was that the game did indeed seem to be immediately accessible, which also became immediately evident after talking to the game’s creator, who had made it a design goal. Which is all fine and dandy. But the lingering question remained : “Could the game actually be fun for all involved (including grown ups?), or is it a game just for kids?”. The answer to that question would remain to be seen…

To briefly synopsize the gameplay and objective, each player chooses one of five adventuring specialists in an effort to take down two Big Baddies (or ‘Bosses’) of the land. The game setup itself consists of players directly choosing these two (out of a total of seven) of these Bosses and placing them in their preconfigured spots on the map/player board.

Both bosses need to be defeated by the time the games’ timer (event deck) runs out or the players lose! But it is not just as simple as walking up to the bosses to give them a smack down, in order to damage them at all, you will first need to complete several quests that serve to make them vulnerable to defeat.

Along the way, you will fight lesser monsters and minions, gather items, hunt for food, gain weapons and spells, and train throughout game night/day cycles, level up your character, and more as you slowly but steadily work towards your ultimate goal of trying to restore peace to the land — all within a 45 minute span.

If this sounds like an absolutely crazy prospect to undertake with children and achieve within such a short duration, it is because it is (at least in theory).

When I read the description of the game and its rules, I could not help but think that children would drown with all the overwhelming number of things that they could elect to do with their 4-5 actions available to perform every turn, and that, for the adults, 45 minutes would feel too short to deliver an experience worthy of an “epic” adventure.

We all walked away from the experience feeling like this was the best cooperative family board game we have ever played.

Here is why : 

While the game comes with some high quality minis for the players, the rest of the game uses standees, which is pretty standard for this sort of entry point game for kiddos. I know these types of cardboard proxies usually take a huge beating after multiple play sessions, especially with kids, but it quickly became apparent after playing that these are quite literally the best cardboard standees I have ever used. Not only is the cardboard extremely durable, but I found that the bases had the most perfect fit into them that I have ever seen. They were all snug enough to be secure from slipping out, but also paradoxically not so tight as to cause abrasion and tearing when fitting in to secure them. I mean, this may seem like a small point, but for me it is not. I truly hope that the full version of the game can live up to this high standard during its full print run, because those of us who care about keeping our games in prime shape truly appreciate this aspect!

In fact, virtually every component of the game is exceptional quality, and even ground-breaking in its implementation in several cases. Each players’ inventory system consists of recessed areas for equipping things such as weapons or health cubes (it’s been done before, yes…), but what I found extremely novel was the use of a recessed area for each character’s “backpack”. Each of the 5 asymmetrical characters sport a varying size space for carrying all of their accumulated goodies, and as long as they can fit them all into the recessed area without spilling over, they can carry it ; if anything cannot literally fit into the backpack, it literally can’t fit, and you must discard something to carry it! I never thought an inventory management system could ever, ever, make it into a kids/family game, as many times this time of upkeep is annoying and detracts from gameplay. This, however, was fun to maintain and keep an eye on.

Moreover, it would “seem” complicated that players have “two” sorts of health bars to keep track of, each with their own unique methods of replenishing. On the contrary, this was also easy to mange, and fun because of the uniqueness of it.

Iconography is surprisingly simple to comprehend, especially given the sheer number of spells added actions available. In many games, this can be unintuitive. With Lord of Loot, this is not the case at all.

There are extremely diverse sets of win conditions that players themselves can elect through their choice of bosses to fight against.

The leveling up system is something that, again, you would think would be a step too much for a kid friendly game. Once again, I was proven wrong, however, as a cardboard inset can easily slip into your player board to indicate your new level and abilities as you fight monsters across the board.  There is nothing overly fiddly about this at all, it is as easy as pie, but still feels like it gives a good sense of progression.

And you can level up your shields and weapons, too? How did they manage to sneak a full on World of Warcraft or MMO into a family game? Somehow, they did it…and again, not a chore to learn.

Dice are used for combat, but this doesn’t feel as crunchy or random as some other games I have played. You still retain a good sense of control throughout the game, surprisingly.

And last, but not least, each boss has their own cute, crafty, witty back story. I won’t spoil the fun, but even grown ups can get a laugh at how the game pokes fun at the cliches of the fantasy world.

Now for the “negatives”….

There were one or two instances of inconsistencies of wording that needed for clarification in the rule book. I have already brought this to the attention of the creator of the game, and this should be rectified by the time the game is released.

The other issue that I found is that for ease of setup, Boss Cards would be a welcome addition. In its current form, players need to look in the 15 page rule book to read the boss descriptions and set up the game, but given the already high quality of the game, it feels like each boss should have their own card with backstory / quests that can be passed around the table for players to look at at the beginning of the game and between turns. It’s not a deal breaker not having these, by any means, but given the great lengths that went into producing this game already, it doesn’t seem like this would be too huge of a stretch to achieve , as it would help add greater immersion to an already rich gaming experience.

That is it!

As you can see, Lord of Loot was a blast for my family to play. My wife favorably compared it to our favorite “adult” game of all time (Uprising : Curse of the Last Emperor), and literally said it felt like a family version of that particular epic game. And that is quite the compliment, as I can think of no better game out there at the moment for us. The fact that Lord of Loot manages to create the same sort of cooperative driven experience with a sense of both urgency and consequence is quite the marvel given its intended target audience. Given that this is a prototype, it is inevitable that I will be forced to send this to another reviewer to evaluate, but know that I will have very hard time prying this game away from my kids!

Final Verdict : Best-of-the-best for epic , cooperative adventure family fun. A+

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