Dork Tower The Boardagame claims being a homage to MB's Dark Tower, a fantasy game produced in the '80s now commanding high prices on the collector's market. I can't comment on that, because I have never seen or played Dark Tower, but I can say that GW's Talisman was most surely a 'source of inspiration' for Steve Jackson's and Philip Reed's creation.
Every player (from two to six, albeit I strongly suggest four) has a character from Dork Tower stories (meaning Brother Zark, not Ken, for example). Every character has some special skills in the game and they gain experience: so, they evolve from low level characters to high level characters, with commensurate rising of 'bashing power'.
The purpose of the game is getting powerful enough to challenge the Evil Wizard (Z'Mindrik) residing in the tower at the centre of the map. If you defeat him, you have won. If not, well, perhaps you are dead...
The map is a circular one and divided in civlized kingdoms and wilderness, with the Shadowlands around the tower of the Evil Wizard. Every kingdom or wilderness area has various 'sub areas': they can be open fields, forest, dungeons or cities for example. Every place may be more or less dangerous, depending not simply from the terrain (dungeons are more dangerous than open fields) but if it's day or night. Of course, night is more dangerous than day...
As soon as you end your move in one space - depending on your character speed - you have encounters (usually armed confrontations with monsters). If you defeat monsters, your character gains experience - useful to become high level character, 'fudging' dice rolls and unleashing Z'Mindrik's wrath to the opponents - and get items and gold. Of course, bigger monsters are, richer the loot is!
Combat is easy: you roll two dice (included in the box) and the monster rolls two dice too. You add the result to your strenght and all the gadgets you have (for example swords, armor, shield, rings and so on). Who has the highest score wins. If you are defated, you can retreat, except in bad areas such as a dungeon or Z'Mindrik tower.
Beyond going around slaying monsters and amassing treasure and booty, there are Quests to be made. A Quest is simply a token put at random: if you kand on an area containing a Quest, after defeating all the monsters found here (if a Quest is in a city, is very easy) you get a bonus in experience points and a scroll (not gainable wth other means, except defeating BIG monsters!). Nice idea, giving an incentive to move around!
Of course, a character can't go around using two swords and three shields. The character sheet has slots to avoid such munchkinly behaviour: you can't, for example, use more than one sword or armor.
As anybody that has played Talisman can say, all Talisman's key elements are here. The game is simple, quick to play, fun and well designed (well, from Steve Jackson himself I had no doubt). We played it and we appreciated it (albeit, I must say, Talisman is better). Some rules were not written in the clearest fashion (we had some trouble placing the Quest tokens, for example, at the beginning of the first game), but some common sense was enough to solve any problems we had.
The idea about asking for (with due payment of 2 experience points) Z'Mindrik intervention is a truly neat one. It can bring Doom and Disaster to your opponents, but it can help them too or damage everybody on the map. This makes overly powerful characters more vulnerable, balances the desire to became 'curse happy' with possibile undesired side effects and it's very funny to see!
My real bone of contention is production values. They are, in my opinion, not to the standard for a $ 40 game. I see a lot of games, because I'm a game retailer, and this one seems to me 'cheap' (excluding the box, very well made and strong). Fantasy Flight's games have components of higher quality, even in their 'budget' line of $ 20 games. Arena Maximus, for example, is not simply a good game but a very well produced one with high quality components. Considering the fact that Steve Jackson Games and Fantasy Flight Games must be very similar in size, I wonder why Dork Tower was made so cheaply (unless John Kovalic has become greedy... I hope not!).
Let's make some examples.
The Scroll cards are printed just in purple, with modest graphics and no images at all. I'm sure that black and white printing, using some images from Kovalic's works, would have given better results in presentation. They should be stronger too: I quickly inserted them in some Magic card protectors to avoud wear.
Many of the game counters are printed on thin cardboard. This made removing them from the sheets a work needing careful attention. If using such 'delicate' counters may be acceptable for gold and experience points counters, it's not for high wear counters such as the monsters' ones. Insert them in a cupboard, let's shake them and draw them a lot of times (the game is mostly abouth killing monsters, after all) and you see, I'm sure, the point. I'd have preferred by far seeing the monsters on true cards and the material is not, in my opinion, strong enough to stand the wear. More, the tempation to have a peek when drawing the monster counters is always there...
The characters' sheets are printed in the rulebook, so they are simply sheets of paper. You have to remove them carefully, then cut them. I don't appreciate this, again for reasons of wear. Making a photocopy is surely an option, but I'd have preferred seeing them in strong cardboard in the first place.
The Tower. This was my biggest disappointment. From the advertising I supposed it was something beautiful and very useful for the game. In reality, it's a modest eight sided cylinder used to indicate day and night on the board. Useful, but surely not spectacular. I was expecting much more, especially after reading about the 'spectacular' 3D tower...
Mind you, the game is good and the components have good graphics. Albeit I don't understand what exacly is the link between the comic and the game (after some games I have no more knowledge about Aurora than I had before the game arrived, I have to say...), I liked it. Nonetheless, is in my eyes far too costly.
