Preview copy provided by PBK Games as part of the Lord of Loot Kickstarter Campaign.
Mighty Adventure, Small Scale
Lord of Loot is a Co-op Adventure game for 1 to 5 players about gathering up loot and using that loot to complete quests and slay monsters. Lord of Loot aims to take the concept of a grand fantasy adventure game and compress it into something shorter and faster to set up. In that regard, it wholeheartedly succeeds. Lord of Loot is very fast to set up and extremely easy to learn.
You can find a video version of this preview on YouTube!
That does mean that Lord of Loot isn’t as deep as something like Gloomhaven, but it’s not exactly a shallow game either. There’s a splendid amount of decision-making packed into its relatively short playtime.
I was definitely impressed by how the game really did manage to capture that adventure game progression in a single session. It reminded me somewhat of Eldritch Horror, but without the obtrusive narrative elements and extreme length.
I’m going to dig into some of the specifics of why Lord of Loot may be a game worth backing, as well as point out a few issues that I did have.
Stellar Presentation
Lord of Loot is a visually gorgeous game with a vibrant board, great-looking tokens, excellent miniatures, and fantastic standees. More importantly, however, is how Lord of Loot uses its design to enhance the gameplay.
The best example of this is the player boards. First of all, they are inset, which I’m a total sucker for. You slot stuff like your heart tokens right into the board, which means they can’t slide or be knocked around, even with a clumsy oaf like me at the table.
Each character has spell slots where you quite literally slot spell tokens into them, but the best part is the backpack. Each character has an inset backpack where you carry spare equipment and items. The cool thing is that the amount you can carry is whatever you can physically fit in the backpack without overlapping. It’s a simple but brilliant idea that makes inventory management a fun part of the decision-making.
Additionally, monster standees have little notches that you slot wound markers into when they take damage. It’s a far more elegant design concept than splattering tokens at their feet and making the board messy.
That said, the game does feature a fair bit of iconography, especially for spells. There is an explanation reference in the rulebook, but I would have loved to have seen a cheat sheet that could easily be passed around the table.
Overall, Lord of Loot is a great-looking game that also uses its excellent visuals as gameplay mechanisms, and I really enjoy that. A large part of a board game’s appeal is its tactile nature, so anything that enhances that aspect is a good thing in my book.
We’re Going Questing!
There are 7 boss monsters you can choose to play against in Lord of Loot, and each one has certain requirements you have to fulfill before you can actually damage them. For example, you must return a bunch of pets to their rightful owner before you can put the Petnapper down for a dirt nap.
You accomplish these quests while roaming the land, exploring locations, battling monsters, and of course, gathering loot. All the while, the boss monster and its minions move to hunt you down while you’re still weak.
Your character has 4 actions, with the exception of the Wyrmkin, who gets 5. You can move around the board, explore tiles, and exploit them. When you explore a tile, you grab a random one and flip it over. Generally, these tiles allow you to gather from one of three bags, items, spells, or equipment, although they sometimes spawn a monster.
This automatically gives the game a lightweight feeling of exploration. You can’t be sure what tiles you’re going to draw. Furthermore, drawing from the three bags is a tiny splash of dopamine every time. Items can be food that help you heal or stave off starvation, you might get a potion, or just some spell components.
Equipment, on the other hand, can be a weapon or shield, but comes in three flavors. Wood, iron, or gold. A level 1 character can only equip wooden weapons, you need to be level 2 for iron and level 3 for gold. Leveling is quite simple, you must simply defeat a monster that is higher level than you. You can choose to fight a monster on your tile as an action, but if they attack you, you also fight back.
Combat comes down to dice rolls, monster dice is determined by its level, your weapon dice is determined by your weapon, and your defense dice is determined by your shield. Any rolled swords deal damage, and shields rolled by the opposing side block them. It’s pretty simple and works great.
There is some extra quirks to the gameplay as well that I like. You can perform a few things that don’t require an action, for example, casting a spell. Spells can have a variety of effects, from turning things into coins to teleporting you across the map, or simply smiting a monster.
The catch is, each spell consumes some components, maybe wood and bone, or iron and food, whatever. Any character can use spells, and you can use weapons in place of a matching component. The kicker here is, when you discard something, you can choose to put it back in the bag or remove it from the game.
That may seem like a small thing, but it can actually enhance the strategy. For example, only golden weapons can hurt the Gilded Tyrant boss. You have to weigh the decision of thinning the equipment bag to dig for those golden weapons while bearing in mind that your lower-level teammates may need them.
On the other hand, the Wyrmkin character can’t eat mushrooms, but her teammates can. She has to decide whether or not to cull them from the bag entirely or put them back in for her team.
Regardless, turns flow very, very fast. Individual actions are quick to resolve, and the monsters are easy to run.
Lord of Loot has a bunch of decision-making about where to go, what to try and collect, which monster to fight, which items to trade, and so on. You have a satisfying power climb from being unarmed to being able to fight the boss all in one relatively short session. Most 4 player games never went further than 90 minutes, and most sessions went faster than that. My two-player and solo games went even faster.
There’s a good bit of strategy, and the nature of the exploration tiles, loot bags, and variety of bosses make Lord of Loot pretty replayable.
There’s one hiccup, however, there’s a bit of rules flux going on.
Rules Fluctuation
The rules of Lord of Loot are still being finalized as I previewed the game. Initially, the book had me fighting two bosses, the guards fought back, and the weapon dice had three swords. However, the designer had received feedback about the game’s difficulty and advised me to make some alterations. Fight only one boss, the guards don’t fight back, and add another sword to the weapon dice.
I played both versions several times and came away just a little dissatisfied with both. You see, you have a number of monster cards based on player count. When you run out, you add a stronger red card and reshuffle, but after a few cycles, you essentially time out.
When playing against two bosses, that timer was extremely oppressive, so I can see why many felt it was difficult. However, playing against only one boss was far less satisfying. We ended most games at level 1 or 2 and really didn’t get the same level of progression or threat.
Now, the designer is taking ongoing feedback, and I’ll be offering mine as well. I’m confident they will find the right sweet spot. But this does mean that Lord of Loot may not play the same way later as it does now, which is why I chose to make this a preview rather than a review.
It’s just something that was worth pointing out. While Lord of Loot is mostly finished design-wise, some of its rules are in flux and still need to be solidified. Keep that in mind when you’re weighing the pros and cons of potentially backing it.
Loot Worth the Gold?
Despite the ongoing rules fluctuations, I don’t see Lord of Loot fundamentally changing the core of what makes it work. In fact, I only see the game improving from feedback. So if you want a fun adventure co-op game, packed into a small time frame, that also has a fast setup time. I don’t think you can go wrong backing Lord of Loot.
I’m pretty picky about co-op games, but Lord of Loot is a good one. I adored the backpack system and grabbing loot tiles from the bags. While it’s never going to match the depth of the bigger, lengthier fantasy adventures, it still packs a great amount of decision space into its relatively smaller box.
There are also a couple of other things I want to point out. When you play solo, you play just one character, and I love that. Nothing makes me lose interest in a solo mode faster than having to play a two-player game
myself.
The game also doesn’t fundamentally change at any player count. I played it at 1, 2, and 4, and I can safely surmise that it works the same at 3 and 5. The bottom line is, Lord of Loot plays great at all player counts, and that is very, very rare.
Ultimately, Lord of Loot is a great fantasy adventure experience with satisfying progression that doesn’t take an entire day to play or half a day to set up. Once the rules are more solidified, I’m confident it’s going to be even better.
Check out Lord of Loot on Kickstarter!
