Climbing to the bottom of the grotto

Have you played Kinfire Delve: Vainglory’s Grotto?
It is a co-operative dungeon-crawler card game by Incredible Dream Studios. Your job is to defeat the titular Vainglory, by descending down the Well, defeating monsters and overcoming obstacles until you reach the bottom, where you face the final gauntlet of protectors. Are you brave enough to face these challenges? ⚔️

The Well is actually a deck of cards, made up of combats, traps, obstacles and puzzles - these are tests you have to overcome by placing enough progress tokens on them. There are always 4 of these cards face up, all with different difficulty, rewards and penalties, and possibly an ongoing ability. ☝️ They also have 1 of 3 colors that is important when choosing cards and rolling the dice.

⚙️ On your turn you have to select a card to attempt. You can play a skill card with matching color and your partner could assist with a card as well, then you roll 4 dice. You add up the bonuses from cards or other abilities with the dice that matched the test type to determine how many progress tokens you can add - you complete the challenge and get a reward if there is enough progress. If not, progress tokens stay, but you get a penalty instead.

This is the basic flow of the game. Managing your hands of cards, trying to play the cards in an optimal way to utilize their bonuses while you fight yourself through the huge pile that makes up the Well.

An interesting twist is how you don’t automatically draw skill cards after playing them. 🧐 Whenever you decide you need new cards, you have to take an Exhaustion card - these are negative effects you have to play around, and some could even instantly lose the game for you on a certain condition.

💬 Ultimately, whether you enjoy this game or not will come down to how much you like rolling dice and output randomness. 🎲 Most tests will require dice, and you always decide about cards before rolling, so you could needlessly waste cards or regret skimping out - depending on the dice results. If you like the game, there are actually two other standalone box sets with different characters, bosses and enemies for more variety.