I’ve been playing Unbroken today. Yes, that Unbroken.

We hear a lot about Unbroken, and most of it’s to do with Golden Bell and their dubious antics. I wanted to step away from all that baggage for a moment and see what Unbroken was like as a game. I backed it on Kickstarter, and although I watched some of Golden Bell’s car crash of mishandling at the time, I wasn’t really paying enough attention to be very upset. The game was inexpensive, and I’ve had other Kickstarter creators fleece me for much larger amounts. However, all that shenanigans has had an undeniably bad impact on the way the game itself is perceived – you just have to look at the 5.9 rating on BGG to see that.

As a game designer, I understand very well the sometimes fraught nature of the relationship between creatives and money-men, and I really felt bad for Artem. It seemed to me that I’d be very wrong to dismiss his creation without giving it a fair chance. I’m very glad I did.

These comments are based on my first three plays of it, which I think is enough to get an initial feel. As usual, I’m not going to discuss the rules in detail as others have already done that. What I’m going to talk about is my experience and my impressions. 

Game 1 – Into the Dark

For my first adventure I took the most basic sort of hero: a brawler. I chose to play on normal difficulty as this combination seemed about as vanilla an experience as the game would offer. Vanilla is usually a good flavour to start with.

I’ve checked the rules and I’m pretty sure I was playing as intended. However, it all went deceptively smoothly. I quickly crafted myself new weapon after new weapon and ended up fighting all four monsters successfully. As a measure of how well I was doing, I beat the final level four troll without taking a single wound.

It had been fun, but a bit too easy. If this was as much of a challenge as I was going to get then it would be on the way to eBay pretty quickly.

Game 2 – A Touch of Overconfidence

After the first game, I changed characters and upped the difficulty to hard. In hindsight, I think my lack of trouble on my first run was mostly down to the hero I used, together with perhaps fortuitous combinations of other elements. I’ll try him on hard mode in a bit. First, I wanted to see what the other heroes offered. First up was the Huntress.

In the end, she didn’t fit my play style well and I ended up wasting her abilities much of the time. That was my fault; it’s down to playing style. As it stood, I struggled to make headway, and had to duck the second monster by sacrificing a weapon upgrade. I would never have beaten it. Then I couldn’t rest (Afraid condition), and by the point I’d run out of time and had to confront the third level monster I was in no place to fight it either.

In the end, I lost the game trying to kill a minotaur within my bare hands. Not entirely surprising.

This felt like a mismatch between me and the hero’s style rather than a problem with the game itself. It was still fun to play though, if a little frustrating, especially after using the very straightforward brawler in the previous game. You might even call him simple (just not to his face). For future games I’ve set myself the challenge of getting competent with all the different characters.

Game 3 – It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over

Not to be beaten, I set the game at hard mode again for my third outing. This went much better with the Sneak character proving much more of a natural fit for me. I thought I had it in the bag till I slipped up and got ambushed by a Basilik on level four. That ambush took a difficult opponent into the realms of a really, really dangerous one, and when I managed to fail my save vs being petrified every single time I sealed my own fate. Eventually it turned me completely to stone, which was bad. It was a tense fight though, and didn’t start out as a guaranteed loss. Average rolls would probably have been a loss too (once I’d been ambushed) but given the other toys I’d collected it felt like it would have been close.

It was one of those games where I was noticeably really lucky at the start and had noticeably terrible luck at the end. Overall it balanced out as these things always do; it was just strange to get it all sorted into sections like that. Even so, rolling dice and drawing cards, mean that these things happen occasionally, and it didn’t stop me enjoying the adventure.

Was it fun?

Absolutely.

Unbroken is pretty quick and straightforward to play. There are several small gaps in the rules where implementing specific powers and so on are a little unclear. However, I just took the least advantageous interpretation each time and carried on. It all worked out fine.

I’d compare Unbroken very favourably to One Deck Dungeon. Both fill a similar slot of light, fast dungeon game. Having played ODD half a dozen times I’ve put it in the pile to trade. I didn’t like it at all. Unbroken gives you way more agency, has more interesting and more meaningful choices, and tells a better tale. I’ll be keeping it.

Are there cons? Sure. But in my view the flaws are ones of layout and production (eg poor choice and use of icons, tiny font for colour text, some flimsy cards) rather than the rules, so I’m going to ignore them here.

Overall, my experience with Unbroken as a game has been very positive. The fact that I’m trying to slim my collection and yet I’m still keeping it should tell you enough.

It’s a real shame that Golden Bell messed up the management of it so badly as that’s detracted from what I think is a cracking little game. The BGG rating seems to be a reflection of GB’s poor handling rather than the game itself (though it’s also a black mark against BGG. Because their rating system is heavily exploited and generally not fit for purpose in other than the crudest sense. That’s a rant for another day though.)

Today, I just wanted to flag up the fact that Unbroken, as a game, deserves way more love than it gets. So now you know.  

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