Too Many Dice? Nope! Never!

TooManyBones

“Too Many Bones”

Designed by Josh and Adam Carlson,  published by Chip Theory Games

The Quick Summary: You are a Gearlock (a tech-savvy mix of goblin, elf and gnome) going out for adventure. By dealing with different encounters you will gain skills and improve your stats to finally face the final boss of the adventure. You have a limited amount of days to achieve enough progress points to be allowed to face the boss. They call this a dice builder RPG, and it’s pretty much right on.

The Awesome:

  • Very high quality components (neoprene game mats, plastic cards).
  • Great feeling of really developing a character.

The Good:

  • Many different bosses with different game durations. One game can last from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours.
  • If you take the time to read the stories on the cards,  you get a nice RPG feeling.
  • Dice! Many, many dice! Each Gearlock comes with it’s own personalized dice that represents its skills.
  • Very nice dice-rolling mechanic where you need to make choices (can’t use all your skills all the time!).
  • Can be played solo.
  • Combat and health system that uses poker-like tokens is very original and works very well.

The Bad:

  • The rulebook isn’t optimal. Many rules aren’t clear or are only present on the summary sheet. I had to watch a video to understand better the flow of the game.
  • Randomness of rolling dice can be a negative for many, but you know what you get when you buy this game!

The Ugly:

  • Nothing! Except maybe the price and limited distribution (only via the editor’s web site).

Keep it or leave it? Definitely keep it. This game is a masterpiece for its art, component quality, and gameplay. Very good potential for replayability and a good challenge.

Review by Sébastien