Doomlings Review

Gideon’s Perspective

Doomlings is a game about playing cards that make up the genome of an evolving species before the end of the world. Mother nature is not most gentle of parents however, so you naturally have the ability to affect and screw over competing species while building your apex Doomling.

Doomlings is a very simple game, and anyone who has watched or read any of my reviews knows that I tend to favor more complicated and complex games. In fact, I even turned down a review copy of Doomlings in the past.

You can find a video version of this review on YouTube!

However, Doomling has always held some magnetism for me. I’m a sucker for variety laden card games and the uniqueness of the various Doomlings depicted on the cards always drew me to it. So I caved in, decided to review it, and I found what I expected. A very lightweight card game, but one I think is worth playing.

Doomlings is pushed as a game anyone can play, it’s often referred to as a gateway game or a filler game. I have a great disdain for both of those terms to such an extent that I could easily write an entire article about why. The short of it is, if I don’t have an urge to play a game on its own merits, it doesn’t stay on my shelf. I don’t value games that exist only suck up a small timeslot between bigger games, it’s either fun to play on it’s own, or it’s a bad game.

Doomlings is a game that I do feel the urge to play. To slightly contradict myself, it is a game I have decided to take with me to every game night, just in case we can find time to play it. Not because it’s a “filler game,” but because I genuinely want to spend the time playing it when possible. I even opted to grab a couple of expansions, something I never do with lightweight games.

This is largely because Doomlings manages to do something that many lightweight games fail to do. It’s replayable, variable, and interactive. It’s got a level of strategic depth, yet it captures the same fun antics of a party game without actually being a party game. At the same time, it’s so fast and snappy that no one is left feeling hurt over the events of the game.

Gideon’s Bias	Doomlings Information
Review Copy Used: Yes	Publisher: Doomlings LLC
Number of Plays: 12+	Designers: Justus Meyer, Andrew Meyer (I)
Player Counts Played: 2, 3, 4 & 5	Number of Players: 2-6
Fan of Genre: Yes	Genre: Hand Management and Tableau Builder
Fan of Weight: No	Weight: Light
Gaming Groups Thoughts: Loved It	Price: $24.99

Presentation

Doomlings consists of 167 cards. These cards are split between ages, catastrophes, and traits, as well as a few gene pool cards that track your hand size.

The design of the cards is excellent all around. They are simple, to the point, and easy to understand. The iconography is clear, and everything is worded in such a way that there is rarely any confusion about what any given card actually does.

The various Doomling traits are adorable, with amusing flavor text that gives the game a distinctive personality. In fact, my group and I can identify most cards by the pictured Doomling rather than the name of the trait. We have fun pointing out the weirdness of our species. For example, maybe your Doomlings are hot-tempered with fangs, big ears, and flatulence. It’s fun to think about.

The rulebook is a simple double-sided piece of paper. Doomlings’ simplicity is further elevated by the tidy and concise way the rules are written; it took me all of two minutes to learn, and it’s one of the easiest games I’ve taught to others.

Doomlings also comes in a very compact box that does leave room for more cards if you get any expansions. It’s small enough to take anywhere and sets up incredibly quickly without taking up a ton of table space.

My only gripe is the holofoil card. Holofoils are flashy for no real gain and tend to warp easily, mine came warped out of the box. Aside from that, Doomling’s is excellent on the presentation front.

What I Like About Doomlings

Snappy Strategic Gameplay

Doomlings is quick to play with very little downtime. Essentially, you play three ages. At the start of a round, an Age card is pulled that affects the whole table with a round-specific rule. Some ages are Catastrophes, the game ends after the third Catastrophe.

On your turn, you play one card, then stabilize by either discarding down or drawing up to your current gene pool (your hand size). The only restriction is that you may only have two dominant traits in your trait pool, ever. Dominant traits also can’t be stolen, discarded, or otherwise messed with. That’s it, you now know how to play Doomlings.

The thing is, the deck itself is a suite of rule exceptions, and you just follow what the card says when you play it. Most cards are worth points, which is how you win, but they alter the reality surrounding them in various ways. For example, Egg Clusters gives +1 point for every blue trait in your trait pile.

Propagation is worth 1 point, but it immediately allows you to play another trait. The “Just trait”, on the other hand, is Worth 2 points, but increases your gene pool. While Doomlings is simple to learn and rounds go by fast, there is a solid amount of strategic planning that goes into what cards you play and when.

Many cards allow players to mess with each other, such as Poisonous, which allows you to swap it with a trait from another player’s trait pile. Other cards, such as Swarm, give you points based on how many swarms are in ALL players’ trait piles.

This means you not only need to factor in your own scoring plan, but also that of the other players. Your trait pile isn’t an isolated system, it’s part of a bigger whole. Then you have ages and catastrophes that can alter the trajectory of any given round. Having a Tectonic Shift ban you from playing Green Traits at a bad time can have ripple effects through the whole game.

Doomlings is a light game that actually requires a bit of thought, which makes you engage with the game on a deeper level than simply socializing while throwing down cards. I feel like a lot of light games exist purely to facilitate a group of friends socializing around the table, and that’s fine, but then the game itself doesn’t ultimately matter.

Doomlings gives you that same social facilitation, while still making itself matter as a game, and I think that’s one of the reasons I really like it.

The Interaction

My bias is showing, but I favor games with interaction over multiplayer solitaire. In Doomlings, I care about what is happening on my opponent’s turns, because it could affect me, or if they end up being a runaway leader, I may have to intervene.

A great many cards affect other players in Doomlings. From stealing traits, swapping hands, or causing the whole table to discard a trait of a specific color. Some cards, such as AutoMimicry, can even protect you from hostile effects.

The “take that” aspects are central to the game, but it also doesn’t feel overly hostile, largely because of how fast the game flies by. Any resentment ends up being turned into a plea for a rematch.

At the same time, that type of interaction keeps everyone glued to the table and the game rather than their smartphone. Turns fly by fast, and interesting things happen during them. The board state changes, Bobby screwed over Sue, then Sue got revenge. I’ve even seen some light diplomacy as players point out a better target for an effect, or promise not to use a nasty card on someone in return for not targeting them.

The interaction is what really sold me on Doomlings. A lightweight point salad multiplayer solitaire game would have lost me. The interaction in Doomlings, the ability to shift the board state by swapping and stealing traits, is just plain fun. We even had one player end the game early through the use of Optimistic Nihilism that instantly activated the third catastrophe. It caught everyone off guard, and we all laughed.

Furthermore, there is obviously a big luck factor in Doomlings, but the ability to target other players can really rein it in. If someone ends up running away with points from some lucky draws, it puts a huge target on their back. It ends up working in a paradoxical way. Doomlings feels like the type of game where anything can happen, similar to something like Cosmic Encounters. However, despite that randomness, it feels relatively balanced, at least at higher player counts.

The Variety

With the exception of a few cards, such as Swarm and Kidneys. Every card in Doomlings is unique. They have unique names, artwork, and effects. Sure, some cards are similar, but they usually have a slight tweak between them. The variety of cards and effects alongside the interactive elements means that no two games play out the same way. Every player always ends up with a different scoring strategy that they have to adapt while they play the game.

That makes Doomlings a refreshing experience every game, and it’s another reason why I took to it so strongly. It’s not just the fact that it’s variable, it’s variable in exactly the right way. You get that same kind of dopamine boost from pulling cards in Terraforming Mars or Ark Nova, because each one is different. Then you have to figure out how to best use those cards to bring you closer to victory. It’s a brilliant but simple tableau builder.

It’s also customizable. You are free to add or remove cards at your leisure if they don’t vibe with your group. Cards from Expansions can be added a la carte. If you feel like the game is too short, you can simply play with more ages. It’s that easy to tweak, and the rulebook supports the notion; that’s pretty cool.

What I Dislike About Doomlings

Running the Deck out at High Player Counts

While Doomlings includes a lot of cards, when we played with four and five players, we ran the deck out and had to reshuffle the discard pile every game. That may not seem like a big deal, but when every card is going to be seen by a player in a one-game, it can hurt the variability aspect a bit.

For example. The card I mentioned that ended a game early, Optimistic Nihilism, will end up in someone’s hand every single game. Skipping straight to a catastrophe is amusing sometimes, but not all the time.

The thing is, I do think Doomlings plays best at player counts 3 and up. So it’s a bummer to be faced with this downside. It is one I chose to fix myself by picking up a couple of expansions. The fact that I felt the need to supplement the base game with expansions could be viewed as problematic, and I would agree.

At the same time, I enjoyed the game enough that I didn’t even hesitate to get them. I don’t usually bother expanding lightweight games, but Doomlings has that special sauce. I do wish there were more cards in the base game, but I also know that Doomlings wouldn’t be able to maintain its reasonable price point if it did.

CCG Elements

This complaint doesn’t really affect the base game, but it’s worth pointing out as it’s part of the Doomlings ecosystem. Doomlings wants to be a fast, fun, tactical, and easy-to-play card game. In that, it succeeds. It also wants to be a collectible card game, and those two things feel incompatible to me.

You can buy standard expansions for Doomlings, but there are also Booster Packs, where you get a random assortment of cards based on rarity. I cannot describe how much I hate this concept, especially for a game like Doomlings. I have no interest in trying to collect holofoils or specific cards, I just want to expand the Doomlings deck with cool stuff. The fact that I can’t simply have “everything” even if I picked up every boxed expansion, annoys me greatly.

I swore off Magic: The Gathering ages ago, and I think the entire TCG or CCG business model is predatory. To see it in a small, accessible game like Doomlings is a huge bummer.

What I’m Mixed On About Doomings

Two Player Gameplay

The two-player experience in Doomlings is fun, but somewhat muted. Some cards only shine at higher player counts, and the “take-that” aspects become a punching match since you only have one possible target.

That dampens the strategy somewhat, but not enough to ruin the whole experience. I’d definitely recommend adding more ages at two players, however, so that there is more time to build up and adapt. Doomlings is a much better game with more players, even with the issue of the deck running out of cards.

Verdict

Doomling’s is fun, strategic, cute, and extremely fast and easy to play. It’s one of the few lightweight games that has ever crossed my path and remained on my shelf. It’s also one of the very few light games I ever enjoyed enough to buy expansions for.

Doomling’s is just a well-designed game, everything clicks into place just right to offer a card game that feels like a card game, alongside the amusing moments that you would find in a party game. To some extent, if feels like it was designed for people like me who would rather scoot butt naked accross a bed of nails than play a game of Cards Against Humanity. I can simply pull out Doomlings instead and play a game I actually enjoy.

Beyond that, the variability and interactive nature make Doomlings something I desire to play outside of circumstances where time is short. I’m totally up for spending several hours playing multiple rounds of Doomlings. Doomlings can stand on its own merits as a game that’s fun to play without the need to “fill” in time between other games.

Doomlings is simply a good, lightweight game with plenty of strategy, even for hardcore heavy gamers like myself. From the complaints I did have, it’s going to fall short of my Golden Shield Award, but only just.