Playing the latest video games is, of course, a lot of fun. Otherwise, we wouldn’t spend billions every year on them. But board games can be pretty enjoyable too, and sometimes getting together with friends or family around a table to socialize without a screen separating everyone from the rest of the world can be even better. As such, we try and review board games here at GiN sometimes too, alongside all the major titles and family friendly video games that we normally feature.
And the game we are reviewing today is Doomlings, which is an innovative and well-designed new card game that is not too difficult to learn, and which can be played in about 20 to 40 minutes. It’s a title that can be played casually without players having to devote all of their attention and concentration on strategic thinking. In our testing, it’s quite easy to play Doomlings while talking with friends around the table, grabbing some snacks and just kind of enjoying the party. While you can craft some strategies to help win at Doomlings, the randomness of the game means that even if you just play whatever cards you think are the coolest-looking on your turn, you could still come out ahead in the end.
Doomlings is also kind of unique in the family friendly genre because it’s competitive rather than cooperative. Most of the family-friendly titles that we have reviewed lately, like the Oh Captain, My Captain card game from Dungeons and Dragons author James D’Amato, have been cooperative, meaning everyone works together for a common goal and then either triumphs or fails together. Doomlings, however, is all about surviving and thriving in difficult circumstances, so it’s every species for themselves – even if that harsh theme is played out in a colorful and almost whimsical way.
In Doomlings, players take responsibility for a new species of creature living on a doomed world. You know when the game starts that the world will eventually end, but the passage of time is kind of vague, so there might be eons before that happens. The goal is to try and evolve your species to thrive as much as possible before the end.
You do that by playing trait cards on your turn, like letting your species grow colorful scales, big rabbit ears or a fat layer of protective blubber. Most trait cards have two functions. The primary thing that all traits do is to help score points. When the world eventually ends, whoever has the most points wins, so having valuable traits is a key to victory. But many of those trait cards also provide some other kind of benefit like letting players ignore hostile effects or even hindering their opponents in some way by, for example, stealing their cards. This can set up a kind of rock, paper, scissors situation in some games with certain traits negatively affecting the world for anyone who does not have another trait that protects them. There are even a few bright red cards with very powerful Dominant Traits on them that can be added to a species, but players can only ever have two of them in play.
While players are busy evolving their cute little species into powerful beings of might, there is also a deck of Ages cards that is drawn from every round. Ages cards define the current era, whether it’s one of feast or famine. Ages cards will add modifiers to every player for the entire round after they are drawn, which can be good or bad. And hidden in the Ages deck are also quite a few terrifying catastrophe cards. Those are world-ending events that generally impose severe penalties on players. Having good traits in place can help to mitigate the effects of a catastrophe or an Age, although they sometimes also do crazy things like forcing everyone to pass their hand of cards to another player. You will just have to roll with the catastrophes as best you can while continuing to evolve your species and score points. Once three catastrophes are drawn, the world and the game ends. At that point, whoever has the most points is declared the winner.
One thing to note is that all strategy in Doomlings is kind of fluid. Unlike a card game such as Magic: The Gathering where you can plan and build out decks around a theme, in Doomlings you don’t have any control over what trait cards you get for your hand, so strategies have to be worked out on the fly. The one element that can give players a huge advantage is hand size because more cards equals more choices. Doomlings took that idea and cleverly made it a core part of the game by tying hand size to a stat called Gene Pool. Basically, your Gene Pool, and how many cards you can hold in your hand, starts at five and can go up or down from there. Quite a few traits increase your Gene Pool, which is tracked with a colorful little board that you keep in front of you while you play, while some Ages events or traits can reduce it. A good strategy is to try and increase your Gene Pool as early as possible to provide more choices as the game goes on.
On the negative side, for such a casual title, there is a fairly complicated setup and initial learning curve. Casual players will probably feel a bit lost when setting up their first game and may not have the desire or willpower to push through that to become regular players. That said, the actual gameplay is not too complicated and should become second nature. Younger players will also likely need a bit of help the first few times they play Doomlings.
We tested Doomlings with different sized groups since it supports between two and six players. In general, more people seemed to equal more fun and longer playtimes, but even two-person duel type situations made for a great time. Especially for a competitive title, Doomlings does an amazing job of fostering an entertaining and welcoming environment that is not too heavy or serious, and one where players don’t have to experience much downtime when they are not the active player.
Because of the random nature of the gameplay in Doomlings and its fluid strategy, it’s not a title that will probably be played competitively at tournaments or conventions. It would be too difficult for anyone to become a really skilled player. Even a master of the game could easily and regularly be defeated by brand new players who draw better trait cards, especially if the third world-ending catastrophe comes into play too quickly.
However, as a family friendly title or one that can be played to break the ice on game nights before moving on to more serious fare, it’s just about perfect. Doomlings does a wonderful job of getting everyone involved in the fun while providing a whimsical platform where everyone can shine and anyone can win.