Following up on the original Dungeon Mayhem (and it’s Baldur’s Gate-themed expansion) comes the stand-alone Dungeon Mayhem: Monster Madness. Monster Madness is fully compatible with its predecessors, but instead of fantasy adventurers battling to see who will be the last one standing, this iteration features humorous variations of some of Dungeons & Dragons’ most iconic monsters.
Dungeon Mayhem is a fast-playing card game of mutual annihilation. Each player gets a unique 28-card deck and 10 life. On each turn, players draw a card and then play a card, with most cards dealing damage, healing, granting extra actions, or drawing more cards. The balance of these effects varies from deck to deck, and each deck also has a few special actions to add a little twist for each combatant.
In Monster Madness, the new characters added are Lord Cinderpuff (a banker dragon), Hoots McGoots (circus owlbear), Dr. Tentaculous (therapist mind flayer), Blorp (hungry gelatinous cube), Delilah Deathray (narcissistic beholder), and Mimi LeChaise (a mimic). These decks lean heavily into the humor of the characters, a concept for which the mimic is particularly well suited, with cards such as “Definitely Just A Mirror” and “Definitely Not A Trap.”
As a supplement to prior iterations of Dungeon Mayhem, Monster Madness is fantastic. It allows for up to six players (instead of just four). It’s in a box that’s large enough to fit all of the prior content. It comes with dividers to keep the decks sorted (including ones for the six older characters). And it’s got a tuck box to hold all of the tokens.
In my experience, Dungeon Mayhem has been a great game to break out with a younger audience (8-16) at family gatherings, even when the players are not particularly familiar with Dungeons & Dragons. Monster Madness provides even more options for this fun, although I expect there to still be arguments about who gets to be Minsc & Boo.
Promotional consideration was provided in the form of a review copy.