I dont mind fiddliness in games, but I thought this game wasnt presented all that well. Usually, when I went through a manual, I know exactly what to take care of or how to refer to the shorthand (action card), but until the end of the second game I was still sometimes struggling to remember which action would be how costly because the information was neither well presented on the character sheet, nor on the tiles/board itself. Same goes for the moves you used up, we always had another player keeping track of the 5 action points someone is spending because its annoying to keep track of how many very used in a single move while still thinking about which possible moves you have left. But thats just a minor gripe, my biggest issue is that the game didnt feel all that ... engaging?
You can certainly have fun walking deeper into the cave, but to me the game just feels too repetetive, isolated and aimless. My 3 biggest gripes:
Basically non-existent player interaction:
The only player interaction the game has is when considering which path to walk, which sometimes could end up another players path who didnt grab all the points on his way. Other than that the players are just digging down without any sort of interaction, because the only concern is backpacking and traversing. In a 2player game, this didnt matter much because you can just take care of counting the other players steps during his turn, but for 4 players this just dragged out the game immensely as the other players werent influencing you much at all.
Aimlessness:
What am I playing for? Playing to win? Or is it a casual experience to just kill some leisure time with? I feel the game wanted to be taken seriously with the points you can get for doing all the actions, but on the other hand the game doesnt offer any form of point overview. Its literally impossible to keep track of how many points every player has, which could potentially be the deciding factor in whether to try pushing your luck or not. But even then, this would hardly matter as the game never felt like there were different players playing it. With some slight deviations, almost every move from every player on the table was highly predictable because the straight forward exploration approach always results in the same "tactics" approach. Move->Explore new tile-> move-> get points, repeat, return to base. The only differentiation factor, and the only saving grace in that regard, is the option to pack your backpack differently, but even that doesnt offer for a wide variety of choices once you realize that some backpack inventory choices definitely work better than most others. In the end we just gave up trying to "win" this game and just viewed it as anice and casual cave exploration together, which made the experience a bit more enjoyable but unfortunately also a bit pointless as the game it wanted to be. On that note, I also should mention that during our last session, the person NO one at the table expected to win... actually won. Thats how much sense the scoring system makes.
Repetition:
Once we got away from trying to "win" the game, we had some fun just building out the cave complex, but the game doesnt offer enough variety to offer longterm enjoyment in that regard either. Not to mention that the game doesnt have any interesting set pieces which could make your exploration special to you or offer some unexpected challenges (like previously existing paths becoming inaccessible, you randomly falling down a floor, or even an old cliched monster that would maybe need some ressources from you to overcome it so the usual backpack packing repetition is a bit broken up , etcetc), but the fields you can actually explore are almost all the same. There is 1 field, which requires some actual planning and decision making and that is the underground lake tile, all the others can just be passed without any planning and dont offer any interesting strategic decisions. If you walk by a camera spot and have a camera (which everyone usually has), then you take a pic. Its not even a question if anyone should do it,a no brainer basically, so how is that a part of the game enriching the player experience? Unfortunately, it isnt and could have easily just been left out.
While I do think that the creator of this game had a good idea here, I think he ran out of ideas before he managed to make the game interesting, exciting or even giving it a more transparent scoring method. The game has its positives as well, but considering the negatives, I cant actually recommend the game to anyone outside of maybe really casual family gaming sessions that dont have a wide experience with board games yet. But again, I dont think the issues I mentioned are just because I am not able to judge the game as a more casual experience, I think the game has severe inherent flaws that make it less enjoyable than most other games I played recently. Too bad, I really wanted to like it. Still debating whether to give K2 a chance after this or not.
