Kaos in the Catacombs falls short of its mission statement

 Kaos in the Catacombs is a free download from PnPArcade that is billed as a one-page dungeon crawl that’s designed for children but will work for adults too.

If you don’t want to read any further, I found it a meh gaming experience but I respect the design elements. And, to be brutally honest, it isn’t one-page because you need a character sheet but that’s just being pedantic. The meat is in the one page.

Said one page is a map of the dungeon and a bunch of tables. The dungeon is really a hallway of rooms. You roll to see what is in each room, which will be a monster half the time. There’s a boss monster in the last room. You then have to fight your way back through a hallway again that now has more monsters.

Combat is rolling a die. Even, you damage monsters. Odd, they damage you. So combat is a coin flip. Since you are only have one direction to go, Kaos has very few actual choices. The only actual decisions in the game is managing special items that you find and your character’s special powers. And, in the long run, that isn’t enough to overcome the random.

There are some elements I do like. The flavor text is cute. The graphic design is very clean and easy to understand. But I found the actual gameplay lacked agency and was monotonous.

When I was first looking at PnP games in general, well before it became its own hobby to me, I played two one-page dungeon crawls that were touchstones for me: Solo Tower Hack and Delve. I would play Kaos over Solo Tower Hack but Delve is a better game.

Kaos in the Catacombs is aimed at kids. And it does do the part of the job of being accessible. However, just being aimed at a younger audience doesn’t mean kids shouldn’t be making the choices.

Matching and stacking before Candy Land

I had expected that counting would be the first steps in teaching our son about board games. Instead, it has been stacking and matching.

I've heard that Candy Land is a child's first game, mostly from other gamer parents who couldn't keep the grandparents from buying it. Being colorblind, I've never liked Candy Land and, as a gamer, I dislike how it offers no choices unless someone decides to stack the deck, which I view as a valid choice.

But it has been pointed out to me that Candy Land not only teaches colors and counting but also teaches kids to take turns and that pawns can represent them on the board. And that if my son rips the board in half or shreds the cards, I won't care :P

However, what was really my son's first exposure to games has been Animal Upon Animal and My First Animal Tower from Fisher Price, both stacking games. I may someday find all of the animals from Animal Upon Animal :D

Matching games have also been a good success. He hasn't yet twigged to the idea that Mommy or Daddy should get a turn but he understands looking for matches. Still, understanding how to look for matches is a big step.

(We've also let him play with Cooties but just as a puzzle. We would never be so cruel as to ask him to follow those rules)

Honestly, identifying pictures and motor skills like stacking are basic building blocks for a toddlers understanding and relating to the world. It's only natural that those should be their starting games.