Are you the best Boss Monster?

Boss Monster card game — How are your dungeon building skills?

It’s time for some dungeon-delving, 8-bit fun!

And we’re not talking about a video game. We’re talking about the card game – Boss Monster.

Boss Monster hearkens back to the now ‘classic’ hero-in-a-dungeon video games where players run left to right and tackle dungeons from room to room as they make their way to the boss level. But in this new card game, players take on the role of the villain – the Boss Monster!

Each player takes on the role of a boss in their own side-scrolling dungeon – building rooms and luring heroes to claim the title of ultimate dungeon boss. Build the best dungeon to lure and capture the most valuable heroes and you’ll be victorious.

And it’s all done in the old-school 8-bit video game artwork.

See if you can be the best Boss Monster!

How to play Boss Monster
Boss Monster is a fairly simple game to play.
After set up, each round consists of 4 phases:

Heroes Appear
Build
Bait
Adventure

Players start by randomly selecting a Boss card from the deck of 9 boss cards and set it to the right of his/her play area. Each player also receives 5 room cards and 2 spell cards from which they choose 2 to discard.

Before the first turn, all players simultaneously build 1 Room – by placing one of their Room cards to the left of the Boss card (since the hero will come through the rooms left to right as he ventures in to defeat the boss).

Then the fun begins.

Phase 1: Heroes Appear

A number of heroes venture out of town to delve into the dungeons each round. In this phase, players reveal Hero cards from the Hero deck equal to the number of players in the game.

Hero cards indicate the Treasure type they’re attracted to, their Health, the Wounds they’ll inflict on the Boss if they live, and the points (Souls) they’ll be worth if they die in a dungeon.

In this phase, each player also draws a Room card from the Room deck to add to their hand.

Phase 2: Build

Now it’s time to Build more treacherous rooms to your dungeon!

In turn (by highest boss XP to lowest), players may place a Room card in their dungeon (face-down). Once all players have placed a Room card (or opted not to), the newly placed Rooms are revealed/built.

A Room card can either be placed to the left of the leftmost dungeon room or on top of an existing room. Since Dungeons have a limit of 5 Rooms, many rooms will be ‘renovated’ by being built over during the game.

Room cards indicate the Type of room (Monster room or Trap room as well as Ordinary or Advanced), room Ability, Damage that a hero suffers, and the Treasure types that it holds to lure heroes.

During the Build phase, players can also use Room card special abilities and certain Spell cards to mix things up.

Phase 3: Bait

Now it’s time for heroes to choose which dungeon they’ll delve into.

Naturally, heroes are attracted to the dungeon that has the most of the Treasure type they’re interested in.

For example, if a hero has a Treasure type of Money (Thief), he’ll head to the entrance of the dungeon that holds the most Money in their dungeon rooms.

If no dungeon holds treasure of that type or there is a tie for that treasure type in multiple dungeons, then that hero stays in town until the next round.

Once all heroes have made their way to the alluring dungeons or remained in town, the Adventure phase begins.

Phase 4: Adventure

During the Adventure phase, heroes attack their selected dungeon. The dungeon containing the Boss with the highest XP is attacked first.

As a hero enters each dungeon room (left to right), the Room deals its damage. Once damage is dealt that equals or exceeds the hero’s Health, the hero dies. That hero card is turned face down and placed to the right of the dungeon to show its captured Soul.

If the hero makes it through all the rooms without taking damage equal to or exceeding their Health, the hero deals Wounds to the Boss. The hero card is placed to the right of the dungeon, face up, to show the total wounds the boss has received.

If a player receives 5 or more Wounds, he/she is defeated and is out of the game.

If a player ends the round with 10 or more Souls, that player wins!

If multiple players reach 10 Souls on the same round, the number of Wounds received is subtracted from the Soul count to determine the winner – the ultimate Boss Monster.

What we like about Boss Monster
Boss Monster is a fun, light card game that our boys (and dad) have really enjoyed. While we’ve provided a quick overview of the game play above, that only scratches the surface. The fun of the game lies in all the cool dungeon rooms, spells, heroes, and boss monsters.

It’s a lot of fun trying to figure out which rooms will make your dungeon both the most appealing and the most treacherous. There are a wide variety of rooms, each with their cool special abilities, that keeps the game interesting.

And watching what your opponents are doing in their dungeons is key to success. After all, Boss Monster isn’t just about building a cool dungeon; it’s about racing to build the BEST dungeon. And that requires competition.

To win, you’ll need to make sure your dungeon is attracting the right heroes. It doesn’t do any good to have cool rooms if all the heroes venture off to the other dungeons. So it’s a tricky balance of building attractive rooms with those that deal a lot of damage.

It’s a fun challenge to face as a dungeon boss.

Can the whole family enjoy Boss Monster?
You can probably already tell that not everyone in the family will enjoy Boss Monster. The cover art is pretty accurate on who will be attracted to the game – boys who love video games.

If you’ve got boys how love the dungeon-delving, boss-monster-fighting video games, then Boss Monster may be a game that gets them away from the screen.

And if you’ve got boys (men) who have experience with older side-scrolling, 8-bit video games, then even better. The nostalgia of those ‘classic’ dungeon video games is all over Boss Monster.

There’s also important text on each card. So players will need to be able to read as well as strategize. While the recommended age is 13+, we know kids younger than that can still enjoy the game (Caleb loves it). We’d say that kids could dive into Boss Monster at age 8 or 9.

How does Boss Monster score on the “Let’s Play Again” game meter?
Boss Monster scores high on our “let’s play again” game meter. The game only takes about 20 minutes to play and once players are familiar with the different rooms, the time is reduced even more. So it’s easy to play a couple back-to-back games.