Tyson HeckertOverview
From developers CMON (Cool Mini Or Not):In Massive Darkness, you’ll join forces with the other players to enter the underground lair of the Darkness. You’ll work together, jumping from shadow to light, engaging the enemy when the moment is right. The minions of the Darkness can be anything from orcs, to goblin warriors, to giant spiders. You’ll never know what creatures await you around every corner. Play the quests in order to follow the storyline, or create your own legends using the tokens and modular board tiles. The Lightbringers won this war once before. Now it’s your turn to add your names to the history books!
Contents
Massive Darkness is a Kickstarter (crowdfunding) board game that has only had one official printing but was widely available in game stores for quite some time. The time of this writing is years after the game’s release, so while few new copies are left, many will float around on the secondary market for years. The crowdfunding-exclusive content will be significantly harder to find, but hey, if old copies of HeroQuest and Warhammer Quest are out there, it should be possible to collect all of Massive Darkness.
Today, I’ll be looking only at the core box’s contents. I have all but one expansion for the game, including the crowdfunding exclusives, so while I’ll mention them briefly, I have yet to look at them closely enough to cover my detailed thoughts on them.
Even though Massive Darkness 2 was crowdfunded and delivered more recently, superseding Massive Darkness 1 for many, I still feel the first game is strong and can stand on its own. Maybe it’s something I’ll write about someday, but I don’t often compare editions of a game unless one is lightyears different from the other.
I’ll cover house rules later, but I do want to mention my own custom variant to bring a much better campaign system to Massive Darkness and pull it closer to an absolute classic, Warhammer Quest. The campaign (story mode) was one of the most disappointing aspects of the game, but thankfully the components and rules were so expandable that it was easy enough to use them to create something totally unique!
Gameplay
Quests
Massive Darkness is a dungeon crawling, dice chuckling, monster bashing and loot grabbing bonanza. 1-6 players take on the role of heroes called Lightbringers, and they embark on one of ten available quests, each with unique twists and challenges. On CMON’s website, two additional quests are available, bringing the official total to 12.
The Cure and Lynith’s Arrival
Quests are played on large square tiles, exactly like another CMON board game, Zombicide. In Massive Darkness, tiles begin at level 1, meaning all Lightbringers and enemies begin there as well. Players will work their way around the tile, kicking down doors, bashing monsters and picking up treasure before making their way to the next tile, changing the dungeon level to 2. This repeats until the quest is won, lost, or players run out of Lifebringer revives (the magical entity that can, a set amount of times, return a player to life).
Dungeon crawl purists may hate it, but most quests in Masssive Darkness have some kind of timer to keep players moving. This prevents hanging around and slow, cautious approaches questing, requiring some guts and a little luck to keep enough pace to score a win.
Lightbringers
To defeat their enemies, players choose Lightbringers to play, each controlling one, or as many as they’d like. Lifebringers have a chosen class, and while each has a recommendation, it’s possible to mix and match classes for unique combinations. These classes have abilities, some available from the start, and some players have to earn. Each time enemies are defeated, Lifebringers gain XP, which is traded in for those new abilities, or used to activate their signature skill (think ultimate ability, but costing XP). Skill advancement is also locked by the dungeon level, so players will need to constantly be on the move to allow more skill unlocking.
Darkness
Lightbringers are called such because their abilities often only work in darkness, with rare exception. The tiles of the dungeon are very clearly marked as light or dark tiles, so players will need to pay attention to where they are in order to optimize their actions and take advantage of their potential.
One more factor to consider are enemy counter attacks. If an attack doesn’t kill the target outright, they’ll counter with one of their own. Players can avoid this by dashing out of line of sight and into darkness, causing enough confusion for the dazed foes that they can’t follow.
Loot
What about the sweet loot? That comes from treasure chests scattered around the board, but also the enemies themselves. Massive Darkness has a unique mechanic where a mob boss, or one of the stronger, roaming monsters will have equipment with them. If they’re able, those enemies will actually use that equipment against you, making them stronger than you might expect! Once defeated, however, it’s yours.
Since you’re acquiring loot at such a blinding pace that most will inevitably end up being junk, Massive Darkness has a way to turn that into treasure, transmutation. Trade in several pieces of one level for one piece of a higher level, and suddenly have something above what the quest level would normally allow. It’s a great way to gear up and prepare a Lightbringer before they hit the brick wall of higher level enemies.
Combat
Combat is arguably Massive Darkness’ greatest strength.
Standard enemies are considered part of a “mob”, 3-5 of them clustered around a “boss”. This mob attacks as a single unit, attacking and defending the same way regardless of its size. In this way, it’s actually accurate to think of minions only as meat shields for the boss. This mob has a piece of equipment with them, which players can take when the mob goes down.
Then there are roaming monsters, big, tough, mini bosses. They’ll spawn either according to the quest, or randomly as events unfold. Each of them carries gear as well, and usually have a special ability to challenge players further.
Either way, combat revolves around dice. To attack, players gather the number and color of dice listed on their weapons, and the number and color of defense dice listed on the enemy before rolling them all at once. Defensive “shield” results block an offensive “sword” hit, and special results called “bams”, or “diamonds” trigger special effects. Get more swords than shields, and the difference carries over into damage. Just don’t forget to leap out of the way if the mob hasn’t been slain, or they’ll get a chance to counter attack!
It’s all very streamlined, and constantly rolling large handfuls of dice is pretty satisfying.
What I Like
Quick, easy, beer and pretzels fun
There’s so much to like about Massive Darkness. What takes the cake is the special combination of ease, speed, and satisfaction. Anyone can play and enjoy the game (I’ve pulled the game out for gaming groups, casual friends, family and solo alike) because the rules are simple, yet some strategy goes a long way into optimizing moves, especially when it comes to light, darkness, and enemy counter attacks.
Roll, baby, roll
There’s a certain satisfaction to the rolling the game’s plentiful dice. It’s really fun, especially at high levels, to toss a handful and come out of top.
Quests
The ten quests in the rulebook are quick, snappy, and fun. Some are quite challenging, and players will need to combine abilities, and a little luck, to come out on top. It’s a game where I don’t feel bad losing because I had so much fun playing, and repeating a quest with the knowledge of what’s coming is usually enough to get through it.
A couple of the stand outs for me are:
What I Don’t Like
Story mode
Right from the start, I’ll mention the campaign system. Called “story mode”, the short of it is: it’s alright, but players will quickly overpower the later quests and unbalance the game. There’s not enough ramp up in difficulty to match the loot and abilities players carry over.
Thankfully, the modding community was pretty active when the game released, and it continued for years. Not just fixing story mode, many variants use the components to change the game into something unique. In fact, I did that myself in 2017!
Legend of the Lightbringers is the name of my variant. It draws heavily from the classic game Warhammer Quest and transforms the game into a long form adventure, rather than a linear set of missions.
I approached its creation by doing quite a bit of research into what makes both games great, and I feel I’ve found a really nice way to bridge them into something totally unique. It doesn’t require new cards or components, and uses only what’s in the Massive Darkness core box, though you’ll probably want to print the rules since they have the random event tables.
Rushing through quests
I like the quests, but the need to rush most of them might not be everyone’s cup of tea. I’m usually a bit more of a slow crawl enjoyer than a speed runner, and Massive Darkness uses the timer often enough that it’s about as challenging as the enemies themselves.
Mobs
This is nitpicky, but I found the concept of mobs a little weird. A whole troop of enemies, 5 or 6 of them clustered around another, bigger one, act as a single character? Throwing theme aside, it’s mechanically not a bad idea, it just looks weird.
Price
I’ll mention price because while it wasn’t a particular detractor for me, it absolutely could for some people. Massive Darkness is fun, but it doesn’t offer a ton to see for the price. Most of the cost goes to the plethora of miniatures, which of course are awesome, but they might not be enough for some people.
- The MSRP of the core box is $119
- Each enemy and hero box goes for anywhere from ~$25 – $40
- If you crowdfunded, this isn’t an issue, but the Kickstarter exclusive box now goes for ~$50 – $150
- Further add-ons, like Zombicide crossover cards, 3D terrain, and the aesthetic tiles (crystal and lava) each have their own cost. However, rather than hunt down a price, I’ll just say they’re less important than gameplay expansions.
If you were to collect the entire game today, it might cost somewhere in the vicinity of ~$500!
Components
Paper
CMON are great at working with their production partners to ensure a high quality product reaches customers. Everything in the Massive Darkness box is high quality, and the cards and cardboard tokens are plenty strong enough to last many years.
Pads containing multiple copies of class sheets are provided so that players can write on them. For those that think they may run out or want to print their own, CMON have provided the files on their website.
Furthermore, CMON has provided the rulebook here, if that’s of interest.
Plastic
Onto the miniatures. Known for fantastically detailed and dynamic mins, CMON delivered another slam dunk with and Massive Darkness. The core box includes 75: 6 Lightbringers, 6 large, roaming monsters, and 63 mobs, bosses and agents.
Personal standouts for me are:
snake lady
troll guy
agents
mob bosses
several of the characters
Voice / Art / Music
App
First, I think it’s worth mentioning the Massive Darkness Companion App. Not required to play, CMON were generous enough to provide something to help track characters if players would prefer a digital option to analog, or want to more easily save their progress for later.
Art
Artistically, I remember the game being a bit controversial. The art has a unique style, done by Frenchman Edouard Guiton, and players will either love it or hate it. It’s certainly closer to comic book style than realism, but the great use of contrasting colors, flowing character designs and impressive concept work for both heroes and enemies caught my attention, so I like it.
Music
Musically, the game did not bother with a soundscape, in fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen one attempted by CMON. That said, I find there’s plenty that fit the theme and add to the game. Probably my favorite is the classic Diablo, or Diablo 2. Perhaps some others that might fit would be The Witcher 3, Darkest Dungeon, maybe even Blasphemous. These all have different vibes to them, so take your pick!
The Tales Told
While there’s no particular narrative to mention in Massive Darkness, just some light fluff to start the quests and flesh out some of the items in the world, I do think the moment to moment emerging narrative is still fun. It can feel pretty thematic to use the unique Lightbringers and battle the very artistically well done enemies. Equally, it’s easy enough to ignore any kind of narrative, enjoying the game for the light hearted monster bashing fest it is. After all, bashing a goblin with a mace is just that, a stylized version of whack-a-mole.
For those looking for an even better emerging narrative, long form play and something to sink their teeth into, I’ll mention my custom variant of Massive Darkness again, Legend of the Lightbringers! Besides better long term progression, I added a lot of random events to flesh out the exploration and number of things you can find. There’s secrets to find and new items to play with, then, finally, there’s the town! With its own set of events that happen each time you visit, you can tell a story before gearing up for the next adventure. Similar in length to the story mode of Massive Darkness, ten quests, the final quest is a modified version of the last quest in Massive Darkness, bringing the game full circle.
You Might Like This Game If…
For those interested in dungeon crawling (albeit fast crawling) either solo or in a group, Massive Darkness is great. Anyone who likes an easy time dice chucking, loot snatching and character developming across a single play session will find a great time here.
I would not come to Massive Darkness looking for narrative, stories, or any type of long form play. It’s best suited broken out with a couple beers and casually played with some friends, or solo with some immersive background music. If you can turn your brain down and enjoy the toy factor as much as the dice chucking while completing an array of challenges across the ten provided quests, and packing it all up at the end of the night with satisfaction, you’ll have a great time with this game.
Score
This review is a little shorter than some of my others because there’s not much more to say about the game, Massive Darkness is simply awesome! Due to its ease of set up, play and rules, fun mechanics and engaging quests, it gets a 4/5 with a golden quill. I greatly enjoy the beer and pretzels casual dice chucking and constant looting in the game, yet it still requires enough strategy to be engaging. It’s a shame the campaign wasn’t better, but there’s many options to help with that.
