As an escape from the horrors of this world, I've been turning to board games as a distraction. I figured talking about what I've been playing might be a nice escape for Blogography as well. So this means I'll have Caturday on Saturday, Bullet Sunday on Sunday, and Game Week Wednesday on Wednesday. One less thing to think about each week, I guess.

I have been a Solitaire fan since forever. I played it with cards as a kid after my mom taught it to me... and then played on the computer when it became the de-facto digital game no matter what platform you were on. I have played many, many versions on computers over the years (anybody remember Kitty Spangles Solitaire?) and always come back to it when I need a quick distraction.

Until... Puzzle Dungeon!

This is a fun solitaire game that came out around 2020, I think. You're essentially battling your way through a dungeon, and I loved it. Eventually I got an extended print-and-play version and was hooked. But then I ended up losing all of it and Puzzle Dungeon was forgotten.

Until... my board game renaissance!

I looked for Puzzle Dungeon but couldn't find it for sale anywhere. But then the creator, Brian Garber, put up a pre-order for the game on his Etsy shop and I never clicked the BUY button on anything so fast.

And the game arrived last week! I've been playing it quite a lot (on the beautiful play mat you can buy for the game)...

From Brian's Etsy page...

What is Puzzle Dungeon? Puzzle Dungeon is a solo card game where you use one hero to battle 20 monsters. Each hero lists the types of monsters they're hunting. The goal of the game is to collect those monsters before running out of weapons.
   
Game Play: Each game is played using one hero, twenty unique monsters, and a thirty-two card arsenal deck. You'll deal and draw cards from the arsenal deck and try to match their suits to the monsters your hero is hunting. When you match with a monster, you discard the cards used and gain that monster's loot. If you can defeat all of the monsters your hero is hunting before you run out of cards, you win. You can play over 550 times using a different hero without any repeats. No other card game offers this much replayability.

And now... a warning...

This game will kick your ass... at first. It takes a while to get a handle on how the decks work and what the best approach is to deal with the monsters you're facing. But once you get a feel for that? It can still be quite a challenge, but it's an addictive one because you know what you're doing and can look ahead to how it works. Having not played it in years, I'm currently losing more than I'm winning but still having a blast.

I love Puzzle Dungeon. And pre-ordered both the Pets and Intro Deck which release next month.

If you end up buying the game, don't forget to pick up a play mat... it's pretty great, and a steal at just $25!

Dramatic lighting effect wasn't planned... it just turned out that way while I was organizing the box!

   
POSITIVES: Fun to play. Beautiful to look at. Quality parts. Massive variety for replayability.
NEGATIVES: The excellent storage box doesn't have room to sleeve the cards. Hopefully we eventually get a "big box" which allows for this.
   
Puzzle Dungeon (Art of Brian Garber Games)
★★★★★★★★★★
BLOGOGRAPHY GAME WEEK WEDNESDAY SCORE: 10 out of 10.