Released back in 2021, Mini Rogue is a real sleeper hit – a teeny tiny solo or cooperative board game that delivers all the fun of a dungeon crawler in a handful of cards, tokens, and dice, wrapped up in moreish roguelike randomisation. A whole new system of tunnels has opened up in this dungeon, as an expandalone sequel called Mini Rogue: The Council is releasing this summer along with three more expansions.
I received a review copy of Mini Rogue back in 2023, and had a great time testing it. Sadly, the timings didn’t work out for me to review it, and while I think it will delight fans of solo or co-operative board games, it didn’t quite make the cut for Wargamer’s guide to the best board games ever. But I’m genuinely happy to see it get such a robust wave of expansions.
Each floor of the dungeon is represented by a three by three grid of face down room cards; you’ll progress from top left to bottom right, having random encounters with monsters, traps, NPCs, and treasure, trying to muster enough advantages to be able to beat the boss on the final floor. With four characters adding some variety to the random dungeons and an optional campaign mode, it’s a charming little puzzle that feels just like its videogame inspirations.
Mini Rogue: The Council seems to be an alternate starter set that’s also completely compatible with the base game, featuring new heroes, new monsters, new bosses, and a new campaign; it even adds PVP for the first time via the new competitive Overlord mode. It should be in stores this month, and arrives alongside Glittering Treasures, which is a purely aesthetic expansion, offering blinged out versions of the boss cards.
Two more substantive expansions will launch in Autumn. Mini Rogue: The Mountains of Torment will have “mechanics focused on risk, madness, and powerful rewards, offering darker themes and tougher choices at every step of the dungeon” – plus new rooms, a new character, and a new boss. Judging by the name and the description, I’m calling this ‘the inevitable Lovecraft expansion’.
Mini Rogue: Beyond the Portal will focus more on characters. There are two new characters in the expansion, an Occultist with a “soul syphon” – no idea what that does, but it sounds unhygienic – and a Tinkerer who can disarm traps. It also features alternate universe versions of existing characters, “introducing reworked stats, redesigned skills, and stunning new artwork”.
When I try to criticise Mini Rogue, it just comes out as a description of the product: it’s a solo or co-op roguelike, and the fun comes from discovering and then mastering all of the content. That’s a finite experience, and one you can get from a lot of videogames, which tend to be cheaper and take longer to wring dry.
But a board game isn’t a videogame, and sometimes a board game is what you want. When I felt I’d exhausted all the content in the base game I was eager for more stuff to do that didn’t exist at the time. There has been one major expansion already, called Depths of Damnation, and a suite of little promo cards, but this new wave of releases will roughly double the amount of Mini Rogue content available for fans. Good times.
If you’ve played Mini Rogue, or can recommend other great solo board games, say hi in the Wargamer Discord community!
Source: Wargamer
