There is a glut of board games on the market that are miniatures heavy and ‘adventure quest’ in style, resembling games such as HeroQuest and Zombicide. We tend to only review a few of these, as many of them have limited availability, which is a pity because some of them are a little bit special.
Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift is one of the more stand-out games of this genre, and it’s currently on its second printing (and can be pre-ordered via Kickstarter). This means you can easily get your hands on this rather odd and different game pretty readily. The smooth design marks it out as the future of dungeon bashing adventures.
Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift is a cooperative game for 1-6 players that works best with about four people and has an ‘icky’ fantasy vibe familiar to fans of Peter V Brett’s Demon Cycle or the Diablo series of video games. The plot begins with a bunch of heroes jumping into a mountain full of demon worshipping cultists and gets darker in subsequent missions. There’s a full campaign, though it works fine as a stand-alone.
One of Perdition Mouth’s appeals is that it’s a lot less vague than many of the traditional dungeon crawling games out there. It’s built on solid euro-game principles; all the rules mesh together, making the whole thing feel seamless. It is (by necessity and design) a little more involved than a Euro-game, but much smoother than your typical dungeon bash. It partially does this via two nifty disc-dial things. The hero dial tracks player actions, the enemy AI dial uses a glass bead system to track threats and monster actions. The idea is that the players really need to work together to calculate the most efficient way to take on the bad guys, and the dial lets them work out various solutions. Like all good co-op games, there’s more than one answer to any given problem, which means every player can shine. (It also stops one player from taking over; there’s rarely one ‘true’ solution.) The game generates puzzles and tactical problems along the way, and these add to the team-based problem-solving adventure.
Conflict and resolution are card based, putting this game on a firmer strategic footing. This is a game where you think your way through, evaluate risks and then try something heroic. The stakes are higher but chance feels like a tame-able thing, and that’s when you know you’re hooked.
The models are very pretty, though a little flat in places and the style is pleasingly gross. They also come up well when hit with a paint brush, the detail being strong enough to work with even those of us with limited painting talents.
The Perdition’s Kickstarter is running until November the 18th, and though it’s aced its goal, you may want to jump on as soon as you can. You can find out more here.
PERDITION’S MOUTH – ABYSSAL RIFT / DESIGNER: THOMAS KLAUSNER, TIMO MULTOMAKI, KEVIN WILSON / ARTIST: MATTHIAS CATREIN, JERE KASANEN, JAMIE NOBLE-FRIER, JUHA SALMIJARVI, TANJA YITALO / PUBLISHER: DRAGON DAWN PRODUCTIONS / RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 2018
