In a world where Kickstarters routinely hit pledge levels at half a grand or more, it’s always nice to lay your hands on a game that runs in the opposite direction. To be fair, there is absolutely a place at my table for sprawling dungeon crawlers with loads of minis, massive amounts of character customization, and dice throwing galore.

But other times, I want something a bit simpler. A game I can play on my coffee table over the course of 15-20 minutes. And for that, Mini Rogue has entered the chat. Mini Rogue is a minimalist dungeon crawler where one or two players delve into a dungeon. Published by Nuts! Publishing, Mini Rogue takes about 30 minutes to play… or much shorter with bad luck.

Gameplay Overview:

Mini Rogue will have your character (chosen from 4 options) delving through 4 floors of a dungeon. At the bottom awaits the boss, your ultimate challenge. Each floor is made up of 9 cards, which you will make your way through, one card at a time. The cards are arranged in a 3×3 grid, and you have to travel from the top left card to the bottom right, so you won’t encounter each card in an area.

Your character dashboard tracks all your stats and resources.

But the basic game loop is you move your character to an adjacent card and encounter it. It might be an item to collect, a trap to avoid, merchants to spend money at, or maybe a monster to fight. Most cards are interacted with via a d6 die roll. Depending on the roll, you may gain a resource (health, gold, experience, food, or a potion), or lose some of those. The most vital one, other than health, I suppose, is experience. This allows your character to level up, earning you crucial extra dice to roll. This is the best way to mitigate bad luck, as rolling extra dice makes it easier to pass skill checks.

Fighting a monster is handled over rounds, with dice rolls doing damage to the monster and having the monster damage you back. Defeat it, and you’ll earn experience (and maybe other loot). When you reach the bottom right card of an area, you will either set up a new area of 9 cards or descend a floor into another level of the dungeon, increasing the difficulty of monsters and traps.

Make it all the way to the bottom without losing your last health point, and the boss awaits you. Defeat him, and you win.

You’ll need to make your way from the top left card to the bottom right.

Game Experience:

While not a perfect game, Mini Rogue ended up being my Jam (Do kids still say that?). I think I’ve played the game about 20+ times since I got it. I’ve tried all the characters (the rogue is my favorite) and had more losses than wins (git gud?) But I really enjoy the overall feel of the game.

Monsters will get tougher as you descend further.

It does a good job of capturing the dungeon crawl feel in a minimalist package. You have the exploration and sense of discovery as you make your way through each level. You have monsters to fight, traps to overcome, special powers to use, and even magic potions and armor to aid you. The fights are also quick and deadly. There is a lot to love here for dungeon crawl fans, as it takes the genre and really distills it down.

My biggest complaint about Mini Rogue is just that the game can be a bit swingy, especially early going. It’s even possible to lose in the very first room. If it happens to be a monster, you have to fight it. Roll too low on your attack and too high on the monsters, and you could be defeated in a round or two. Normally, you can spend health or experience points to reroll a die, but you won’t have any experience in the first room. Thankfully, that never happened to me, but it is possible.

There are 4 different characters to try out.

Until you hit level 2, you will only be rolling 1 six sided die for everything. This means that lucky or unlucky rolls could sink your run. But once you get that second die, some extra health, and maybe a potion or armor points, the game opens up wide. You can start taking bigger risks, which come with bigger rewards. And once you level up to the max, you can turn into an unstoppable monster killing machine.

The other thing to note is that it can be a bit tedious to have to shuffle and reveal the 9 card areas so often. Depending on how many monsters you encounter, you could blast through an area in just a couple of minutes. Once you clear an area, you are supposed to collect all the room cards, shuffle them, and deal out a new area. It can be a bit fiddly. A good house rule I’ve tried is just not reshuffling the cards until the draw deck runs out…for the lazy, like me, it works.

But the gameplay in Mini Rogue is streamlined and fantastic. There is a small expansion out of the game already, and more on the way, which excites me. I’d love to see more and more variety in the room cards.

Final Thoughts:

I really enjoyed Mini Rogue. Designers Paolo Di Stefano and Gabriel Gendron did a fantastic job of distilling the dungeon crawler experience down to a minimalist approach. The game, while swingy, is still a ton of fun. The 4 different characters let you approach the game differently with their unique powers. While I’d love to have more variety in the room cards, what’s in the box is plenty to keep you entertained for quite a while.

Final Score: 4.5 Stars – A quick-playing and portable dungeon crawler that distills the genre down to the basics.

Hits:
• Easy to set up, quick to play
• Dungeon crawl feeling in a little package
• Characters all feel unique enough to alter the play style
• Good amount of content in the box

Misses:
• Game can be swingy at times
• A bit of overload on the icons to learn