Boss Monster game review

Sometimes I impulsively buy games purely on the packaging. Boss Monster is one of those games. I saw what looked like an old school 8 bit video game box and I couldn’t resist. It just went *bloop bloop bloop* into my buying pile. Let me tell you I am 8 bits of happy to have this game.

In Boss Monster you play as the Boss Monster of a dungeon from the old school side-scrolling games. You build up your dungeon in order to attract heroes to defeat. This would be easy if you weren’t competing with other players to achieve your goal.

The game seems a little complicated right out of the box. There are three card deck slots for the 5 decks. (Rooms, Spells, Heroes, Epic Heroes, Bosses) so setting up the game might be confusing if you have a friend who just grabs a stack of cards and starts shuffling.

To start each player is given a Boss Monster. This card will be who you are for the round. Your Boss Monster will have an XP rating; the highest XP rating has priority in play. The card will also have a level up ability. Once during the game when you have a five room dungeon the level up ability activates. Typically the lower the XP for the monster the more powerful the level up ability: bringing balance to these characters. Your Boss Monster will also have a treasure type.

Now the goal is to build the best dungeon to attract and defeat heroes. For that you need rooms. There are 2 types of rooms, Monster and Trap. These are built out from your Boss Monster to a maximum of 5 rooms. Each of these rooms has a damage value (for defeating heroes) as well as special abilities and treasure types. Advanced rooms can only be placed on top of existing rooms of the same type and treasure.

Spells will help you out during the game. Some, marked with a hammer, can be played during the room building phase and others (marked with an axe) can be played during the hero combat phase.

Finally there are the heroes. Heroes are attracted by one of the four specific treasure types. Whoever has the most of that treasure type attracts the heroes. If the health of the hero is lower than the damage you deal you defeat the hero and collect a soul but if the hero survives your dungeon you take a wound. You are eliminated if you take 5 wounds and you win if you collect 10 souls. Epic heroes have more health. They deal two wounds or award two souls. If players are tied for most treasure the hero stays in town until the tie is broken.

I like this game because it plays differently from most games. Most of the activities are performed as a group. Players reveal their next room together, they calculate their treasure totals together and attract heroes based on that. The game is great for strategy. Planning on which heroes to attract and when is very important. Sometimes ensuring ties prevents wounds. Sometimes breaking ties can cause a number of defeatable heroes to come to your dungeon.

The game becomes rather quick once you know how to play: roughly 20 minutes or less per game. I like this because it allows a player to play multiple Boss Monsters and try many room combinations in a single night.

The cards are a lot of fun to read. Each card is a tribute to old school gaming or pop culture references and are full of humour. Whether it’s the boss Cerebellus the brain or the Monster’s Ballroom you will have a laugh. I also recommend reading the hero cards, they are brilliantly titled and the quotes are great for a giggle (Bodon the Pantless.)

The downsides to the game mostly come from the rule book. It could have used more work and there are quite a few rules that need more clarification. It turns out our group was playing wrong in that we combined advanced rooms with the basic rooms when calculating damage and effects. (When rooms stack only the top room counts.) I also found that there isn’t much in the way of mechanics for gaining spell cards. This limits the number of spells you get to try out.

To sum up Boss Monster is an extremely fun game that is full of nostalgic gamer humour. While the rule book needs the dust blown out of its cartridge the game is still well designed and a blast to play. I would recommend this game if you ever enjoyed 8-bit gaming or if you just really want to be the big bad Boss Monster for once. This game is great for up to four players on the nerdy/game side. It won’t be as fun for grandma but for any child of the 80s or 90s it will be great way to level up game night.