Cryptic Explorers Review

Cryptic Explorers is dark. Quite literally in theme and color. This is a 1 vs. many game where one player will control a goddess of death and her minions and the other(s) will control a team of cryptonauts, a squad that is able to explore the Realms of Death, trying to gain knowledge of death. Seeing a theme yet? The game is relatively straightforward. The cryptonauts will take their turns, performing at least 2 actions with each cryptonaut before resting them for the rest of the round. Actions consist of movement, attacking, and preparing. Preparing will allow you to counter against some of the goddesses abilities. Each character has a unique ability set that can be enhanced as they gain souls to give them even stronger abilities. As they move through the map, they'll also be met with different types of doors and items that can be used to help with their journeys. After the cryptonauts go, the goddess is next. They are not physically on the board but their presence is felt throughout. They can play cards from their hand as well as add minions to the board to make life difficult for the other players. Cryptonauts will win if they gain enough knowledge of death cards, complete the maps objective, and leave the realm. The goddess will win if they kill everyone or if they prevent the other player from completing their win conditions.

The Good: This has to be one of the more unique games that I've come across thematically. It's incredibly dark and macabre throughout. Playing each side is like playing 2 completely different games. The cryptonauts are action driven while the goddess is card driven. It's fun to swap sides after a game. I loved how many different characters that there were. Almost an overwhelming amount but when you're playing with 6 or more at a time you can cycle through a lot in a few games. Having 4 maps as well gives a ton of variety in each game you play and they all have different requirements.

The Okay: The artwork for the maps and it's components are great. I'm not a huge fan of the art for the rest though. The characters and goddesses/minions are fine but I wish they were more detailed. Also, this is an extremely difficult game to photograph. The goddesses are all rated-R and when you need to post photos that's hard to do (this is a me problem). What I'm trying to say is that this is not for children.

The Not So Good: The rulebook felt like a jumbled mess at times. If you wanted to reference an action you can take it's not where you'd expect to find them and there are a lot of lore pieces in areas that they didn't really need to be. I love that they've created a whole world here but it felt like it could have been laid out better. I needed to watch videos to fully grasp the game.

Final Thoughts: Cryptic Explorers is not going to be for everyone. That's been established. There is a ton of game in the core box and you can add an expansion for even more characters and goddesses to play with. It's a fairly simple game when you learn it well enough and it's gorgeous to look at. At the end of the day, it wasn't for me but if you're interested in a new dungeon crawler that comes straight out of a black metal album, look no further.

Thanks to Tempest Tome for providing a review copy.