Welcome Back to the Dungeon Review – New Heroes, More Chaos, Same Bravado

Welcome Back to the Dungeon is the standalone expansion for the wonderfully boisterous bluffing game, Welcome to the Dungeon. If you’ve played the original then you’ll be very familiar with how this game plays.

But if not here’s a quick refresher.

A game of Welcome Back to the Dungeon starts with a fully equipped adventurer and a deck of monster cards. On your turn, if you don’t pass, you’ll draw the top card from the monster deck and then decide:

• Add the monster to the dungeon
• Remove the monster from the dungeon, but also remove a piece of equipment from the adventurer.

This continues until only one player remains. Then that player takes all of the remaining equipment and attempts to defeat all the monsters within the dungeon.

It’s a wonderful game of bravado, that quickly pushes you to the edge of reason. Because you only ever know half the story, you never know if you can make it through the dungeon or not.

So let’s take a look at what’s new in Welcome Back to the Dungeon, and whether it lives up to the original.

Similar but different

In the original Welcome to the Dungeon, being forced into the dungeon allows for one, maybe two decisions tops. Usually, you just draw monster cards and see if you have the equipment to defeat them. It’s very straightforward, and because of that all of the decision-making is front-loaded into the bluffing stage of the game.

Welcome Back to the Dungeon mixes this up.

A lot.

First adding four new adventurers: Princess, Ninja, Bard, and Necromancer. Each has a unique arsenal of items, more powerful than those found in the original game.

For example, the Ninja’s Smoke Bomb allows you to defeat any monster but then requires you to discard another item. Or The Bard’s Lucky Coin that allows you to defeat an even-strength Monster, and the next monster if they are even-strength as well.

These items provide you with a lot more agency in the dungeon phase. When to use an item can now be the difference between pounding your chest in victory and throwing your cards down in defeat.

Trying to factor this variability into your decision of going into the dungeon or not, is a lot tougher than the original. Along with the complexity of the items, this means Welcome Back to the Dungeon is no longer perfect for first-time gamers. But it’s still light enough for experienced board gamers to pick up and play without trouble.

New monsters, new Heroes

The second big change Welcome Back to the Dungeon introduces is special monsters.

These monsters aren’t beaten like regular monsters. Instead, they all have special abilities, ranging from helpful, or absolutely devastating.

Picking up one of these monsters in the pass-or-play phase creates a massive imbalance of information. As while others are adding strength to the dungeon, you’re adding chaos.

An example of one of these monsters is The Ally which allows you to defeat the next monster in the dungeon. Being the one to put this special monster in the dungeon gives you a large advantage. While everyone else will assume it’s an extra monster, you know it’s actually one monster less.

Some of the other special monsters include the Gelatinous Cube which destroys an item, and The Count who gets stronger if the player has already had a successful run.

Like the new abilities these special monsters are fun to play with because they change the answer to the question: can I go into the dungeon?

However, when combined with the new items, I found it tough to get my head around all the extra information to process. With time I’m sure I’ll feel more comfortable. But, at the moment, even after several plays I’m struggling with both new mechanics at once.

How does it compare to the original?

The highlight of the new components for Welcome Back to the Dungeon is the new health tracker board. This allows you to track the adventurer’s health when they work through the dungeon. It’s not high-tech, or necessary, but it helps when there are a lot of monsters within the dungeon.

Additionally, there’s new card art and icons for all of the monsters found in the original game. Otherwise, everything else is on par with Welcome to the Dungeon, with its chunky cardboard item tiles.

When it comes to which is better between the two games. My vote goes to the original Welcome to the Dungeon, but it’s close.

I enjoy the simplistic, deterministic nature of the original that never fails to bring the bluffing to a razor’s edge. That said, Welcome Back to the Dungeon is like having a new chef at your favourite restaurant. It’s the same food, but with a different flavour, so it’s a fantastic change in pace when you need a break from the original.