One Deck Dungeon: Forest of Shadows
This is last one in the group of games I’ve lined up for the Board Game Challenge 2026 (though I still have to write about Propolis).
This was the first game I bought myself when I thought I was getting into tabletop board games back in 2023 and I played once, but the gaming thing didn’t stick then.
So here I am returning to this game after three years and remembered how easy it was to setup for a quick game.
This is a nice small box ‘dungeon delver’, even though technically we are in a forest, and will fit in my bag nicely for trip to the coffee shop or work.
One Deck Dungeon is a card game “roguelike” — a dungeon delve that is different every time, difficult to survive, with a character you build up from scratch. The deck consists of various foes to combat and other perils from the dungeon. Each card depicts both the obstacle to overcome and the potential rewards for doing so. When you defeat a card, you claim it as either experience, an item, or a skill, tucking it under the appropriate side of your character card to show its benefits. The longer you take exploring the dungeon, the deeper you’ll delve, and the difficulty will scale up quickly! If you make it far enough, you’ll have to fight the dungeon boss. Survive, and you’ll be a legend!
One Deck Dungeon: Forest of Shadows is a standalone expansion for One Deck Dungeon that contains new heroes, new dungeons, new perils, new foes, and new mechanisms: Poison and event Perils! It can be combined with the original game for a hybrid dungeon experience, with the heroes and dungeons being compatible with the original, or played on its own.
In the box you get:
- Rule Book
- 5 Hero Cards
- 30 Dice
- 1 Turn Reference Card
- 1 Campaign Sheet Pad
- 44 Encounter Cards
- 4 Level Cards
- 5 Dungeon Boss Cards
- Stairs Card
- 2 Basic Skills Cards
- 15 Red Damage Tokens
- 6 White Potion Tokens
- 8 Green Poison Tokens
- Poison Reference Card
- Basic Potion Card
- Hordes of the Shadows 4P Difficulty Enhancement Card
After opening the box for the first time in three years I was still pleased with the quality of the contents, solid and shiny, good card stock and all fitting in such a small box.
I randomly chose the character I was going to play and ended up with the ‘Slayer’ who had the ability to store a black action dice after winning a combat encounter, this came in really handy especially with the end boss.
It took a couple of encounters to get into the swing of it but play was easy to pick up and the game started going quite smoothly, making multiple choices between item, skill, potion, and levelling up with each win was the hardest decision a lot of the time.
But once you get some of those autoskills battles become noticeably easier.
There were a few times where I was so close to getting knocked out that there was a bit of tension but by the time the boss (Mud Golem) came round I was supercharged and waiting for it.
This was quite an easy boss with the skills and upgrades I had ready for it and only took two battle rounds.
I’m going to do the campaign mode to complete playing this for the 2026 Gaming Challenge and see how that goes.
