Supremely Deflated Expectations

At this point the anticipation was unbearable....

I love life, even though it has an unbelievable track record of kicking me right in my man parts. No, on the whole life is pretty damn good. Yesterday the Cursed, Mr Chaos Space Marine and my good self spent the entire day gaming at a local gaming club. It was all damn good fun, although the Cursed probably now has a fear of Asura's... but I digress. We got back from this day of gaming to mine intent on getting some board gaming in, maybe some more Legend of Drizzt or Claustrophobia so I could get on with formulating some proper opinions of those games for review. When we got back however, there was a lovely parcel of epic goodness from OG Games waiting for us. 'What could it be?' They asked. 'Only one thing' I replied 'Super Dungeon Explore!!!' Cue loud girlish squeals of delight and much high fiving.

You see, I think for at least 12 months now, being the geeks that we are, we've waited patiently for this game to arrive. I've had it on pre-order from since before I was made redundant and that seems like an absolute age ago now. The cute anime chibi styling's of it all had us salivating at the prospects of getting our hands on it. So there we sat, looking in awe at the box paralysed by excitement... for all of about one second before I tore the wrapping off and glared lovingly at, well a really shit quality box. No two ways about it, the first thing that hits you as you pick the game up is just how crap a quality box it comes in. I fully expect the box to disintegrate within a month, especially with the cats around. Hell the little cat Poppy has already buckled the front of the box just by standing on it. Word to the wise Soda Pop, if I was walking into a shop and picking this product off of a shelf, it'd feel bloody cheap because of the shitty box.

But hey, I mean it's what's inside the box that counts right? Well yeah of course it is. So I opened it up, trembling with excitement. What I was greeted with inside was a very shiny well designed rulebook, full of pretty pictures and and neat design features. It's clear whoever was responsible for producing this rulebook wanted it to look perfect. Under the rulebook were 6 large square tiles. Five of which are double-sided floor tiles for playing the game on, the other one is for tracking game progress and storing Loot and treasure cards etc. Speaking of which, the game 'cards' are cheap as chips. The card tiles aren't too bad, although to be brutally honest having only 10 different tiles to potentially play games on seem a little low, especially when it's double-sided tiles, they do at least look like they'll do the job relatively well. The gaming cards though are crap, if Soda Pop think the quality of their 'cards' are in any way acceptable in any shape or form they're so deluded it's unbelievable. 

All the bits and bobs outside of the box

The game cards are without question the worst game cards I have ever had the sad misfortune of coming across. They aren't card at all, at best they are glossy paper and feel cheap, nasty, and quite frankly given the price of the product are wholly unacceptable. They will tear and dog ear after maybe one or two games of play, they are that flimsy, utterly dire components and I'd advised they re-consider rapidly where they have their cards produced and maybe offer for sale some 'serious' proper gaming cards instead of the tatty rubbish they supply the game box with. At this point hand on heart I was utterly demoralised looking at the game. Removing the card tokens from their spru didn't lighten my mood much either, they had not been suitably punched, and as such the printed surfaces sometimes tore, and yeah, I needed to use my craft knife to extract them in one piece to avoid damage, piss poor. The fact that my specialist dice have faded print on them and already look well worn didn't do much to improve my melancholy mood any. But lets be honest here, I brought this game on the back of those super cute chibi miniatures. So do they disappoint?

My WTF dragon. Horridly cut miniature!!!

Sadly yes they do. Not in terms of their design aesthetic, on that score they're veritably full of epic win, they really are nice miniatures once assembled. No, it's the assembly that causes the ball ache here. Yep the miniatures do not come pre-assembled. Not a huge problem normally, even though most board games you'll find come ready to rock 'n' roll right out of the box. Their miniatures get plus points for being made out of a sturdy plastic substance suitable for painting on, but that's where the praise stops. Some of the miniatures come cut into as many as 5 or 6 fiddly pieces (not just the large miniatures, but the heroes and Kobolds too), each of which has a possibility of warping during the moulding process, and then refusing to fit properly. Putting the miniatures together was an utter bitch for the 3 of us, all of us experienced modellers, poly cement doesn't work on whatever plastic these are made out of so super glue is required. But superglue doesn't appear to like the substance these are made out of and takes an age to dry and form a good bond.

Our industrial assembly line in full flow

Fitting the Kobolds together might have been a bloody nightmare of epic proportions, what with trying to wedge badly moulded pieces together with brute force and super glue, while not gluing yourself to the miniature was awful, the pieces are too damn small and fiddly. I don't know how their metal miniatures were cut, but these are painful. They don't 'dry clip' together either. The heroes too proved a veritable pain in the arse to fit together and some just refuse to fit together at all, so badly shrunk and warped are some of the pieces, my witches staff refuses to fit and the less said about the dragon the better. But hey, they've mostly been glued together now, and they are pretty nifty miniatures that I personally feel are probably just about worth the hassle. But only just. The final grumble though is that because some of the pieces are so warped and bent that there are some big gaps on the miniatures themselves, and I have to say that hand on heart I wasn't ever expecting to have to get my sculpting tools and green stuff out to rectify problems with a board game.

In no way is it suitable for ages 3 and up!!!

However, the biggest epic fail on Soda Pops behalf is the fact that no where in the box are there any assembly guides to make your life easier, to confirm you have indeed got the right horribly warped tail or sword arm for that particular Kobold. Seriously guys what the fuck were you thinking? Or perhaps you weren't. On the back of the box they proudly proclaim the product is suitable for children aged 3 and up. My arse would I let any kids near this product assembled or otherwise, the miniatures are way too fiddly and the parts big enough to choke on. I'm not too sure how strict the age coding of products are in the States, but here in Europe we take these things seriously and this is no where near a suitable product for a small child. Another thing they might fall foul of in terms of EU law is that nowhere on the box does it say that it may require some assembly. Guys look, I know this is your first real major product and there are going to be teething problems, I accept that I do, I've been rooting for you for over a year now, but the vibe I get off of this product is that you might be out of your depth and need help with it.

Here's one of the images that got me excited in the first place

So how does it play though? I honestly don't know. The deflation was so complete, and the length of time it took 3 of us to assemble the pieces so long that it totally killed any enthusiasm we had for playing the game. It's odd because the only other product where the excitement levels were this high amongst my friends was Gears of War. With Gears though we were playing the game, admittedly badly, 30 minutes after opening the box. With Super Dugeon Explore 2 hours and 30 minutes later we were still waiting for the bloody glue to dry and work out which tail went where. The game still promises much though and I'll hopefully give it a go sometime soon, however, it's gone way down my list of priorities because of the issues I've had with it thus far. I felt I ought to share my experiences with you because I know some of you have been eagerly awaiting this product just as much as I have, it's just that right now it feels very much to this here blogger that it is a case of style over substance, certainly where quality of components is concerned. Luckily though the evening wasn't a complete wash as we were able to have a mammoth session catching up on season 4 of the Big Bang Theory. Peace out!