Hear me out. What if you played Spot It AND killed monsters?

 I think Spot It is a lovely little game. You can play it with little ones who can’t read or show actual judgement or with brutally judgmental adults. 

So when Alexander Shen built a dungeon crawl around the idea of Spot It wasn’t something I could pass up.

Dungeon Spot consists of a stat card and thirteen dungeon cards. With the help of some tokens, the stat card helps you track health, attack, defense and treasure. Each card has four symbols on it and, in true Spot It fashion, any two cards share only one symbol.

You deal out two cards and draw a card for your hand. Pick any two of the three cards and resolve their matching symbol. Discard the used cards and draw two more cards.

(Why not have a tableau of three cards? Having a designated hand of one seems like a holdover from an earlier set of rules)

You fight monsters with attack and traps with defense. Items will improve your attack, defense, health or wallet. Fights are roll a die for each side. Add bonuses. High number wins and you win ties.

You go through the deck, you clear a level of the dungeon. You can choose to leave with your loot or go deeper, shuffling the deck again. And, this is a touch I like, your max hit points go down by one every time you go down a level. 

Oh, run out of health, you die and lose. Otherwise, points are loot and lowest dungeon level.

While I am having a lot of fun with Dungeon Spot, it has a number of issues. Some of which are because the rules really need some clarification. For instance, the only reason I know how item resolutions work is because of an example. It’s never actually explained in the rules themselves. And there’s one symbol, a hallway or maybe a shield, that I have no idea what it means.

I initially was worried that you’d only have two cards and no choices. Three cards and three choices, on the other hand, actually had the opposite effect. That gives you enough control that the game becomes weighted in your favor.

Which is why I like max hit points going down as you keep going. Because maxing out your attack and defense as early as possible feels like the best play, reducing the challenge of the traps and monsters.

So, I think the choices in Dungeon Spot are obvious and it takes bad cards AND bad die rolls to offer risk. Mechanically, I think it’s so-so.

But it’s Spot It as a dungeon crawl! The idea of the game and going through the motions are fun.

Meh game. Fun experience.