One of the best things about dungeon crawler board games is the way they provide hours of cooperative, world-exploring fun. If you’re a fan of fantasy board games that involve epic battles and tons of opportunity for scoring loot, you’ll love Dark Souls. This exploration board game will force you to work with the other players to clear out the dungeons of creeping dangers and effectively manage your stamina in an effort to take down the monster at the end of each round.

Clearing the Rooms

Dark Souls give each player their own little cardboard playing board, which they’ll use to collect tokens, play cards, and fight bosses. At the beginning of this board game, you will choose one mini-boss and one regular boss to fight. But before you can face off against the Big Bad, you’ll have to set up three or four rooms and clear them of their monsters.

Each room contains a certain number of monsters that you’ll have to fight in order to earn Souls. These Souls can help improve your character stats or earn you new equipment by drawing one equipment card. Be careful not to let any of the players die, however, or else the whole encounter fails. Players are given a limited number of tries (known as Sparks) in order to clear a room.

While the room-clearing aspect of the board game is not quite as fast-paced and exciting as its boss fights, it does give you plenty of time to develop your characters and come up with a strategy to defeat the evil bosses. Dark Souls is similar to the way video games force you to clear the dungeon of evil minions and score loot in order to prepare you for the ultimate fight towards the end.

Fighting the Bosses

Dark Souls has several boss fights that serve as major turning points in the action of the board game. The mechanics of these boss fights force players to create a unique deck of cards at the beginning of the boss fight in order to use against the boss. This combines a bit of luck and strategy in the hopes that you’ll draw the right card at the right time to defeat the Dragon Slayer Ornstein or the evil Executioner Smough.

Whether you beat the boss or not, you’ll be sure to have loads of fun collecting cards and rolling the dice to earn valuable Souls. One of the best aspects of Dark Souls is that it’s incredibly replayable due to the innovative behavior mechanism of the game. No two boss fights are alike, so you’ll never find yourself playing the same game twice.

Another thing to keep in mind about Dark Souls is the amount of downtime during the game. If you’re not the alpha player of the game, you’ll find yourself waiting and watching while the other players make their moves. However, not to fret! Once you get used to the rules, players can pick up the pace and move the game along quite nicely. Players will also engage in frequent tactical discussions, offering each other advice about what move to make next.

Dark Souls Expansions

Dark Souls comes with quite a few expansions in addition to the base game. Darkroot is an expansion that eliminates the repetitiveness of the board game by adding new and varied items. It also adds ultra bad mega bosses that make the boss fights even more intense.

The Character Expansion goes one step further by adding variety, player choice, and new combinations and classes that make it a worthy expansion for fans of the game. Dark Souls also has a couple of smaller expansions that add mini and mega bosses to the game, such as the Four Kings expansion and the Stray/Asylum Demon expansion.

Explore Away with Dark Souls

Dark Souls is playable by 1-4 players, so single players can enjoy the board game just as much as small groups can. Playing time lasts around 90 minutes to two hours, although it can potentially go on longer depending on how often you win or lose each round. It’s suitable for ages 14 and up, so teenagers will especially enjoy the fantasy world.

Buy Dark Souls today and enjoy the infinite possibilities for fun!