Players: 2-5
Playing Time: 60-90 minutes
Summary of the Components
Catacombs comes in a dense box containing: three double-sided game boards; decks of half-size and full-size cards; player mats; and 62 sturdy wooden discs along with stickers to go on them.
Quality: In general, the components in Catacombs are all high quality. However it's really the boards and discs that make the game, and they're great. The discs are very thick and sturdy, giving them plenty of heft when you flick them, while the boards are well made so that the discs slide across them effortlessly. 5 out of 5.
Beauty: Unfortunately, things are a lot more mixed when you approach the beauty of the game. The biggest problem is that the artwork for all of the monsters and characters is done as shaded black-and-white art. Though the art is good quality, it doesn't mesh well with the color details and it doesn't stand out at all on the stickers on the discs (which is even more of a problem for usability). Contrariwise, some of our players found the full-color artwork on the boards very attractive (though I thought it was a little too CGI). 3 out of 5.
Usability: There are several good usability elements in Catacombs. The game includes standard icons for abilities like "stunning blow" and "critical blow" which are easy to distinguish, while a good job has been done in using the backs of the discs to show various conditions (wounded, incapacited). The discs have also been color-coded to easily separate them into various categories (e.g., heroes, undead, mythical creatures, etc). Still, more could be done, such as an attempt to iconify the special powers that some creatures possess (which currently requires a lookup) and the abilities of items.
The game's major usability problem, however, is those black and white stickers, which just blur together on the table. You have to squint to tell characters apart for each and to see what monster is what if they're from the same category. It was also occasionally hard to see what board to use based on the pattern shown on the room card. 2 out of 5.
Theming: Generally, Catacombs feels like a fun dungeon crawl, exactly like it's supposed to, with monsters, treasures, and characters alike having good color. Mind you, there is a little bit of abstraction due to the game's basis in flicking. 4 out of 5.
Overall, Catacombs is a well-produced game that's marred only by the black-and-white artwork used for the stickers that go on the discs. This results in some beauty and usability issues, which is a shame for an otherwise great game. Based on the game's other strengths in quality and theming, it still ekes in an above average "4" out of "5" for Style.
Summary of the Gameplay
The Basis of the Game: The core of Catacombs is quite simple. The players -- each of whom controls a hero -- move through a series of rooms. The contents of each room are based on the draw of a card, which details the geography of a room (as different rooms have obstacles in different places) and also the monsters that it contains. Those monsters will be run by the fifth player, an "overseer".
Within a room, character and monster discs are flicked at each other, doing damage when they hit. Some characters also have ranged weapons, which allow them to flick smaller discs while hanging back. The characters are trying to eliminate all the monsters, then in the last room to eliminate the Catacomb Lord.
While exploring the dungeon, the players will get one opportunity to purchase items at a merchant and one opportunity to heal at a healer's.
Beyond that, the game plays out through the unique characters, monsters, and Catacomb Lords in the game.
The Characters: There are four characters in the game; they'll all be used in each game, to keep it balanced. Ideally, you have five players, and one plays each character (leaving one to play the overseer).
Besides their normal "melee" attacks, the characters each have their own special powers:
- Elf. Can fire two arrows in each room.
- Thief. Can reposition herself after missing and earns extra money for killing monsters.
- Barbarian. Two times per game can "rage", which allows him to make four melee attacks (flicks) in a row
- b>Wizard. Gets a handful of spells to cast, ranging from the magic missile (which flicks two arrows) to a shield spell (which places a large obstacle on the board).
The Overseers: Finally, there are four unique Big Bads, which end the game. The Sorcerer has mirror images, the lich continually summons undead, the gorgon kills incapacitated heroes, and the dragon continually summons fire spirits.
The GM Rule: A rule in Catacombs says that though the overseer should try to win, he also "should want to make the game enjoyable for the other players." That means it's not entirely competitive, as the overseer falls more into a GM role. It's probably OK for him to TPK the party, but only at the end, where the opportunity for success was tantalizingly close (unless the players are dumb, I suppose, then they might get gacked earlier).
Relationships to Other Games
Catacombs is a flicking game, which means that it's a sort of dexterity game whose main mechanic is the the flicking of discs across the play surface. It's pretty unique in using its discs to represent individual adversaries in a dungeon (though I'm slightly reminded of FFG's old Disk Wars games where you had disks that represented army units).
The Game Design
When you're looking at the design of a flicking game, you have to start with the flicking component itself, and I think Catacombs does a very good job here. The board is nicely constrained, but still big enough to make flicking at distant targets with accuracy a challenge. The introduction of the obstacles to the board is near genius. I think it's what really makes the game work.
Beyond that, Catacombs does a great job of figuring out how to translate between fantasy roleplaying tropes and flicking mechanics. Ranged attacks resulting in smaller discs that you flick is very smart, while the wizard having a shield spell that places a large disc in the way is (again) genius. Generally, the monsters, characters, and catacomb lords all have powers that translate to flicking in interesting ways.
For everything else, I think that Catacombs does a pretty good job of keeping things simple, which is exactly what a fast-paced flicking game needs. Monsters having one or two hit points, players collecting gold for future items or healing, and other stuff like that is minimalist and works fine. It helps to keep the game very fast-paced, never feeling like it's lagging.
As one of the best flicking games any of us had played and a really clever design overall, Catacombs clearly earns a full "5" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
Catacombs is a great translation of fantasy dungeon delves into a dexterity-based flicking game. It's clever, it's fun, and it plays fast. The only bad note in the game is the unfortunate choice to use black & white stickers on the discs, which muddies the playing field. Everything else is near pitch perfect.
