Dusk Runners
- Board's Eye View
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
Dusk Runners is a fully cooperative adventure game from Dragonmount Press. Designed by Zsolt Haszpra and Boldizsár Németh, it's a game where the 1-4 players are exploring, salvaging weapons and equipment, and eventually battling (and running away from) monsters.
Early on in the game, while you're exploring and salvaging, the monsters seem to be almost an irrelevance. They spawn in a dormant state so are barely an inconvenience. That's of course at dusk. When night descends, it's a different story: the monsters are in hot pursuit and you realise at this point that you probably should've done more to thin their numbers in the dusk while they were such passive targets...
Tho' you're moving your characters around a map, the core mechanic in Dusk Runners is deck building. You draw 1-3 cards from your individual deck when you are put to a test; for example, when trying to pick up and 'salvage' a card beneath the terrain tile you are on. To pass any test, and likewise in combat, you're looking to reveal a number of specific icons, and each of the characters has a strength in a particular icon (ie: more of those icons on their starter deck of cards). The more cards you draw for tests, the faster you cycle through your deck, and to replenish the deck you need to take a rest action. That recycles your discards back into your draw pile but you'll have to add a darkness card which will be a hindrance. When eventually you find your character has to take damage, that's done by card attrition...
As you explore and salvage cards so you're able to potentially power up your character, and the idea is that in a campaign game played over successive explorations you're characters will eventually be tough enough to face off against the Nightstalker; the Boss Monster from whom you'll otherwise have to scarper away. The game is obviously called Dusk Runners for a reason.
Dragonmount Press certainly haven't skimped in the production of Dust Runners. You play on a randomised initially hidden terrain map laid out on raised interlocking plastic mounts which hold the terrain tiles in place and which also have a compartment for the secret cards beneath. There are a lot of cards and tokens packed in the box, along with colour-coded sleeves for each character's cards, and even the box itself is pressed into service in the game, with positions on the underside of the lid for holding in place cards used towards the end of each play.
The game incorporates an initial tutorial game to introduce players to the mechanics. This uses just a tiny proportion of the cards in the game and really only gives a hint of the depth of world building that underpins Dusk Runners. And because the monsters initially seem to offer little real threat, you don't feel any great pressure until the tutorial's latter stages. It's only on a subsequent play that you begin to more fully appreciate the design, particularly as it translates into a full multi-game campaign. Tho' most of the deck management rules were clear, our tutorial games with the preview prototype did leave players uncertain about exactly how and when cards could be 'prepared' and played to their tableau where they could subsequently be drawn upon. We will hope to see this illustrated more clearly in the final version of the game.
Dusk Runners is due to launch on Gamefound on 17 March. Click here to check out the campaign. We're looking forward to seeing how Dusk Runners develops so we can eventually stand up to the Nightstalker!
