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Munchkin Quest does a lot of things that I am unsure of. It adds a lot of mechanics to the basic Munchkin play. One would hope this would make the game more strategic or more complete, but I’m really not sure it does. It requires more testing, but… hm…

First off, I’m kind of unsure what they were intending with how you build the board. Having rooms on both sides of the tiles makes it impossible to have a stack to draw from, and makes it really weird to decide which side to pick each time you draw a tile. The “connectors” also seem really odd. Many of them don’t seem to serve a purpose, and once again, they’re printed on both sides, making them more complicated to draw than is really necessary.

The dice rolls, too, really leave me pretty conflicted. Combat in Munchkin the card game goes pretty fast, and it’s normally pretty clear how things can be affected immediately. With these dice rolls, things are much more swingy, and I don’t feel like it’s really for good reason. Instead of other players fucking you over, it’s the dice most of the time. That’s not nearly as fun in something that’s supposed to be a game of backstabbing. It also makes your base level way less important than it is in normal Munchkin, besides as a counter towards victory. You’re more likely to kill your first monster through a lucky roll than actually being equipped for it, and monster boost cards are much less significant due to the dice rolls, even though they persist through multiple turns.

Finally, most of the wheeling and dealing of Munchkin is removed by the room layout. Since you can only support someone one room away, that means you can’t negotiate with everyone at the table for help against tough monsters. There’s normally only one person within range. You look to them, and they shrug, and then you go and die alone. It’s the player interaction that makes Munchkin a game worth playing, and this game removes a lot of that. You have much less incentive to fuck other players over or to work with them. It just doesn’t really click.

All of these are impressions based on our short learning game, of course. Maybe after figuring it out more, it’ll click more. As it is now, though, playing it kind of just made me want to play the card game. It’s more straightforward, and has way more chances for trash-talking. That’s always been the appeal, as far as I’m aware.