The Adventurers! And the Temple of Chac
These days, board game companies go a long way to make their products stand out from the masses - they have to. And this often results in an incredible package, top notch art, and nice components. However, a flashy looking cover and bright shiny plastic pieces alone do not make a good game, and this leads to a lot of let-downs, at least for me. And what makes this situation worse, is that I nearly always buy new games based on gut feeling alone. So often a game’s fluff and theme pull me in and raise my expectations, but ultimately turn out quite mediocre, or worse - have little to do with a pasted on theme. When I bought The Adventurers, my expectations, like always, were very high. The story of a band of adventurers breaking into an ancient Mayan temple in order to loot treasure, all the while avoiding death traps flooded my head with thoughts of good ‘ol Indiana Jones and Goonies. Once I saw a picture of the game in play with it’s giant plastic boulder, and crushing wall models I was hooked. This time however, the game delivered exactly what I wanted - a light hearted, exciting game with “toy” appeal - thoughts of Fireball Island, Crash Canyon, and Thunder Road all came bubbling up from childhood memories as soon as I began to play. Finally - a game lives up to my expectations.
Rules wise, The Adventurers is very simple. You randomly pick two characters, then choose which one to send into the temple. The other is a “back-up” character that can enter the temple if the first should get killed - there is no third chance.
At the beginning of each turn you roll five dice, then each player consults their characters “load level”. For each dice that meets or beats your load level, you gain one action for the turn. Basically, as you character becomes more and more burdened down with glittering loot, the less they can do each turn - they are too busy keeping hold of their share of the treasure!
During your turn, you spend those action points on moving and picking up treasure. The Temple is divided into three different areas - the crushing walls, the lava room, and the river. Each of these areas also present their own actions that you can execute while in them. For example, in the crushing walls room, you can spend actions to look at the glyphs on the walls in order to gain clues as to the safe route through the lava room. In the river area, you can jump up and down on the rickety bridge in order to sabotage it for any adventurers that follow. There are also 5 different locations around the temple that house unique and valuable treasures that need to be pried from the walls in order to steal. Basically, any of these actions cost a single action point. Once your character uses all of their action points, they are done for the turn.
After all the characters complete their turn, the boulder moves. The boulder is in itself an interesting mechanic. It acts as an ever present danger - if it rolls over you, you’re dead. It follows a long and winding track around the temple, and the adventurers are required to traverse this track multiple times in order to get out of the temple with their loot. The boulder moves a random number of spaces each turn, determined by rolling dice, and it gains speed as the the game progresses, so trying your luck by ending your turn in front of the rolling boulder is always a risky venture. In addition to being an unstoppable ball o’ death, the boulder acts as a game timer. You see, the boulders track ends at the temple’s exit - basically, once it slams into the only way out - anyone trapped inside is doomed. So in a nutshell, the goal is to run around the temple, snatch up all the loot you can, and get out of the temple before the boulder seals the temple off forever! The player who makes it out alive, and with the most treasure wins!
The game plays extremely fast - you can burn through a 2-player game in 15 minutes. And nearly every turn offers an intensity that many games never offer during play. The mechanics presented in each area are extremely clever, and at no time do you feel bored - the pressing walls, the ever moving boulder, the dwindling treasure cards - there’s always something that will make you feel the need to rush.
There are a few things that could be tweaked to make this game better however. With a fixed board layout, strategies to complete the game become stale unless you force yourself to try out different ways through. A modular board, with randomly drawn ”areas” would have gone a long way to fix this problem. There’s also very little direct player interaction. Creating an action that would allow players to interact with other players would be welcomed. Being able to trip or pick-pocket fellow players would be entertaining. Finally, the number of treasure cards should be scalable depending on the number of players. There’s far too much loot lying around for only two or three players - reducing their number in smaller games would go a long way to enhance the game, as players would struggle over control of them, and it would also drive players into regions seldom visited in smaller games like the bridge, which is rarely used due to the risk involved.
All in all, The Adventurers is an incredibly entertaining game. It’s above all else, simply FUN. And in a time when fun is often set to the side in exchange for tight game mechanics and balance, this is a very welcome change. Make no mistake - The Adventurers is not meant to be the focus of a game night, but man, what a great diversion.
-
DEACON
