[First published on Fall 2012 Gamers Alliance Report Issue]

After the great success of Dungeon Lords, it would have been a real shame not to exploit the atmosphere of the dungeons and the neighboring village. It has taken two years to prepare the Dungeon Lords expansion (to be released this year in Essen) but in the meanwhile, the real protagonists of Dungeon Lords, the small Imps, get a game for their own: Dungeon Petz.

Dungeon Petz and Dungeon Lords are two really different games but you’ll feel at home when reading Dungeon Petz rules which follow designer Vlaada Chvatil’s now usual, narrative style. (Actually, the 20 pages of rules are really overmuch compared to the complexity of the game.)

Players are Imps going into business opening Pet Shops. The pets they are going to sell are not the usual pets but are young monsters, once grown, to be sold to Dungeon Lords. During the game, players will buy pets, feed and take care of them, bring them to exhibitions and, finally, sell them to interested Dungeon Lords. The game runs for 5 rounds and, in the end, the one with the most prestige points will be the winner.

The main idea behind Dungeon Petz are the needs of the monsters. You know what each of your pets need but you are not always sure you will be able to meet those needs so you have to be prepared. All pets are different both in the beginning and also as they age. Pet counters are made with a special wheel you can just turn round to round to mark the new age making visible more needing symbols.

Every turn has 6 phases: set-up, shopping, need cards, showing off, business and aging. Some phases have several steps.

In set-up, you get some gold, reveal information on the next exhibition and Dungeon Lords’ tastes and prepare the map board with new stuff including food, cages and pets. It is now time to go shopping and each player has to secretly prepare (in up to six groups) the Imps. You can add one or more coins to each group that has to have at least one imp.

Than a “worker placement” phase starts where the players will decide what to buy. Placement order is determined by the amount of Imps+coins in each group starting from the largest one. Of course, bigger groups mean less actions for you; you start with just 6 Imps and you can get only 4 more during the game. Tied groups are resolved in turn order. How many groups? How many Imps? How many coins? These are not simple choices because there are a lot of things to do.

You can buy cages that can help you in growing your pets, especially the highly magic or highly angry ones. Every turn, three cages are available but just two can be bought and you need a group with at least two Imps to get one since the cages are really heavy.

You need food for your pets: vegetables and meat. You need to buy new pets from the 4 available each turn. But you can also get artifacts, potions, add-ons for the cages, new Imps or just a place on the platform to earn more “reputation” selling your pets.

Read the full review on Fall 2012 Gamers Alliance Report Issue

Infos courtesy of boardgamegeek.com. More Infos.