The Last of Us board game review – gratifyingly grim

The Last of Us: Escape the Dark is an extremely rare thing for a board gamer like me. It’s a videogame adaptation that manages to do something different, and it’s a sequel to an existing game that meaningfully expands on the original mechanics. Not everyone will vibe with its luck-heavy cruelty, but as a lover of thematic and hard-hitting games, I’m a fan.

Before we jump into my The Last of Us board game review proper, here are some more details about how I tested the game. Publisher Themeborne kindly provided a copy for the purposes of this review, and my thoughts are based on multiple full playthroughs with player counts of one, two, and four.

What is The Last of Us: Escape the Dark?

Key specs:

The Last of Us: Escape the Dark is a thematic, dice-based dungeon-crawler. It uses an adapted version of the rules from Themeborne’s previous hit, Escape the Dark Castle – a stunning adventure game that may not rank on Wargamer’s ultimate best board games list, but is certainly among my personal favorites.

It’s a cooperative experience, with each player taking on the role of one of the core cast from the original Last of Us game, as they attempt to evade FEDRA soldiers and hordes of roaming zombies on their journey to the fabled ‘safe haven’ of Jackson.

Like other ‘Escape the Dark’ board games, the game’s primary mechanic involves drawing from a deck of chapter cards and resolving the story that’s revealed. This usually involves combat, which is resolved by rolling dice to for your characters’ skills, to reduce the health of any threats you face. If anyone dies, you run out of time, or the zombie hordes get too overwhelming, you all lose.

As with its Themeborne predecessors, the game’s physical design and components all support its relentlessly monochrome, pen-and-ink visual style. The quality, look, and feel are excellent – but anyone hoping for a riot of color on the tabletop should try elsewhere.

How do you play The Last of Us: Escape the Dark?

You and your fellow players begin the game by escaping a FEDRA quarantine zone. There are five possible locations your group can pass through to reach Jackson, though many routes will initially be blocked by Threat tokens. To clear these, you’ll need to explore the locations and clear out some of the hostiles you meet there.

Characters can explore a location alone or as a group, and characters at different locations can explore different places from the rest of their party. Exploring involves nominating someone to turn the top card of the location’s chapter deck over (a risky endeavour, as sometimes a card will dole out damage to the chosen leader upon being revealed).

Because the world of The Last of Us is a cruel, hostile, fungus-filled place, you’ll usually meet something dangerous while exploring – and that often means combat. Depending on what weapons they’re carrying (if any), players can choose to engage in melee or ranged combat.

Melee involves rolling your character’s unique die, whose faces show different combinations of the game’s three skills – Wisdom, Cunning, and Strength. If a character rolls the same skill that’s shown one of their enemy’s many, many health dice, they can remove one matching skill die from the baddie’s card.

Alternatively, you can expend ammo from your ranged weapon to roll one or more ammo dice. Roll a target, and you can remove a die of your choice from the enemy health pool.

If the enemy is still alive after your attack, they attack you back (providing your dice result doesn’t block them and they can match your attack range). When you take the final die from their health pool, the chapter card is discarded, a threat token is removed from that location and you’ll get the chance to search for useful items.

Combat isn’t your only option; you don’t have to clear every chapter card from a location (though there are benefits for doing so). You can also choose to withdraw or bypass a fight that starts looking lethal. In fact, a character doesn’t even have to explore on their turn if they wish – they can instead spend the turn at ‘camp’ and gain a one-off benefit unique to the current location. And, once everyone is done exploring or camping for the day, they have some downtime to trade gear, craft and upgrade weapons, or consume healing items.

But don’t dally because, after the turn, the game’s calendar advances by one day. This might add more threat tokens to the board – putting more obstacles between you and Jackson – or it might bring you closer to the dreaded Infected calendar marker. Whenever players are instructed to ‘lose a day’ by various in-game events, this looming doom advances closer – and can end the game immediately if it meets the survivors’ calendar marker.

Even if you manage to make it to Jackson without dying, your plight isn’t over yet. Getting there reveals not a comfy bed, fresh food, and a rest – but a chunky final boss, who you’ll need to deal with before you can reach safety. Depending on which events and chapter cards you drew along the way, you might have added Boss tokens that make this last stand even more difficult. Draw too many of these, and it’ll result in an instant loss for the survivors.

However, if the players manage their calendar, Boss tokens, and best the boss, they’re crowned victorious.

What’s good about The Last of Us: Escape the Dark?

The first thing you’ll notice about The Last of Us: Escape the Dark is that this game is stylish. In a world where videogame board games come flooded with armies of grey plastic minis, the bold black-and-white illustrations and minimalist components are particularly striking (although, of course, there is a collector’s edition that comes with a big pile of said grey plastic, if that’s your cup of tea).

Despite lifting its main mechanics from an existing game, Escape the Dark suits its new Last of Us theme well. Each encounter comes with a narrative and a difficulty level that makes it feel dark and extremely dangerous. The crafting and weapon mechanics added for this adaptation feel like a faithful representation of the videogame’s unique identity.

The tried-and-tested dungeon-crawling card-and-dice mechanics remain fast-paced and nail-biting. Exploring is a careful balance of managing your resources and pushing your luck, and the combination is a satisfying mix of theme and low-level strategy.

Thankfully, every new mechanic introduced slots in seamlessly. The game’s limited crafting and RPG elements add an intriguing bit of extra complexity to the Escape the Dark system, but things never get complicated enough to be off-putting. Challenging it may be – but this game is perfectly beginner-friendly, and you can easily explain how things work as you’re playing.

What’s bad about The Last of Us: Escape the Dark?

The original Escape the Dark Castle was an incredibly simple board game, and The Last of Us: Escape the Dark sacrifices some of that simplicity. This has a very noticeable downside, and it’s all to do with bad luck.

Almost everything in this board game is random, from the chapter cards you draw to the skill you roll on your character die. The game subtly tweaks the odds in many ways – for example, Ellie has far better odds of rolling Cunning than Joel. However, the exact in-game outcomes are still heavily reliant on chance.

This means that, through no fault of your own, things will often go badly for you. In fact, they’re more likely to go badly than they are to go well – as the monsters you’ll meet are particularly beefy. A sudden or brutal loss might leave a sour taste in your mouth as it was Lady Luck, not you, that made this happen.

This isn’t too upsetting in Escape the Dark Castle – games are short enough that you can easily try again without losing motivation or momentum. The quick, addictive gameplay loop keeps you invested.

But The Last of Us runs longer – and if you’ve been playing for over an hour, only to suddenly lose outright, you might be less excited to start from scratch. That extra investment might make things feel a little unfair, and that can seriously mar a game’s replayability.

Verdict: Who is The Last of Us board game for?

If, like me, you’re a fan of the previous Escape the Dark games, this is a worthy buy. It’s an excellent innovation on the core mechanics. Though it might not be quite as punchy and moreish as the original, I found its complexity far less clunky than the space-themed Escape the Dark Sector.

There’s no need to be a Last of Us fan to enjoy this game, though the small snippets of narrative writing and the setting details might hit harder if you are. The only real requirement is a tolerance for luck-based mechanics. If you prefer your strategy board games with more crunch, you’d best explore elsewhere.

Source: Wargamer