Order here - Tales Of Tails
WBG Score: 7/10
Player Count: 2-4
You’ll like this if you like: Cute animal themed push-your-luck games
Published by: Hobby World
Designed by: Denis Saidashev
This is a free review copy. See our review policy here.
When I look at the box art for this game, I get a real sense of the brilliant 80s children's cartoon, Dungeons & Dragons. And I loved that show! So, I was keen to try this game, simply from the box art. I knew it would have nothing to do with the show, but nostalgia is a powerful tool. Tales Of Tails is less about 80's cartoons though, and more about Dogs finding gold in a spiralling maze! Let's get it to the table and see how it plays.
How To Set Up Tales Of Tails
Each player takes one of the Doggo player boards along with seven matching Paw tokens and places it in front of them. Each character has its own unique skill, so be sure to check that as you make your choice. Five tokens are placed on the board directly, whereas two are left off to the side. You may be able to get these later in the game. Next, shuffle the Quest cards and deal two to each player, placing the remaining cards back into the box. Each player will choose one of these Quest cards to keep as their own personal Quest, placing this face down in their play area. Keep that a secret! The second card is placed face up in the middle for all to see and is now a common Quests, open to all players.
Now, find the starting heart-shaped room card—set to the appropriate player count—and place it in the centre of the play area. You can use the two-player side for higher player counts if you want a more challenging game. Next, stack three round tokens onto this card with round three on the bottom and round one on the top. Shuffle the remaining room tiles and form a face-down deck. Shuffle all Potion cards into a separate face-down deck, dealing each player one card from the top. Players will place this Potion card next to their player board face up for all to see. Give the first player token to the last player to pet a dog, and you are now ready to begin.
How To Play Tales Of Tails
Players will now take turns to do one of three actions across the three rounds. The first action is to explore the dungeon. Here, you will simply draw the top card and place it onto any open space in the dungeon you choose. The only rule is you must connect at least one path from this new tile. You can rotate it however you see fit and place it next to any other previously placed tile.
The second option is to escape the dungeon. Here, you simply need to plot a route from the starting point to any exit. An exit is a way out of any tile that has no other tile next to it. You can move through as many tiles as you wish, but if you encounter a trap or monster, you need to be able to defeat or survive this encounter. This is done by having the correct symbols on your player board or any previously attained cards that match the amount needed as shown on the card you are currently encountering. If you do not have the necessary symbols, you can still get through traps and monsters, you just cannot take the card after the round to gain the benefit from the monster cards, and will take a forfeit from any traps that were not disarmed.
Any card you activate, be that a defeated monster, a trap you have not disarmed, a room with a coin, potion, or artefact you want to collect, a treasure chest you can collect (with a key collected previously), a portal you use, or a Stray Raccoon you want to recruit, simply place one of your paw prints onto this room. Trace your route to an available exit, and that is the end of you turns this round.
The final option available to players is to take a nap. This is what you will do if there is no available route of the dungeon for you, be that because the monsters are all too strong and you cannot defeat them, or survive an encounter with them, or you would simply prefer to gain an extra paw print. Taking a nap ends your action this round; you will not gain any benefits from any rooms, but you will move one of the two paw prints you placed next to your player mat during setup onto your mat, so you have an extra one for any subsequent rounds.
When the first player escapes the dungeon, the remaining players will then take four, eight, or twelve cards from the top of the deck, depending on if there are one, two, or three other players remaining in the dungeon. These players will then only be able to draw from the reduced deck to explore the dungeon for the rest of this round. They need to plan and find a route to escape before this deck runs out, or otherwise, take a nap.
At the end of the round, all players will take the cards with their paw prints on and gather them up. They will score any rooms with coins on at the end of the game, subtracting any traps that were not disarmed, and gaining any defeated monsters and recruiting raccoons, slipping them under the left side of their player board so the symbols showing the additional fighting power are only now visible. You will do the same with any keys gathered, slipping them under the right side of your board. You will now be strong to fight your way through the dungeon in any subsequent rounds. Take off the top round tracker from the central tile and start again with another round. Do this three times and then at the end of the game, players will total their coins, and the player with the most gold collected wins the game. Ties are broken by the number of monsters defeated. Remember to total any coins gathered from completed quests, be that your own personal quest, or any shared common one.
Is It Fun? Tales Of Tails Card Game Review
This game comes very close to excellent. As it is, it is good, but there are a two main things that hold it back a little. Let's go through them to see if this is for you or not.
First, the number of tiles you will put down in the first round that you cannot really encounter can be frustrating. There will be monsters that are too powerful, treasure chests that need keys you do not have, doors you cannot get through, and traps you cannot disarm. It can be annoying to see all this opportunity that is unavailable to you. As such, you will find you take a fairly simple route through the dungeon, as long as there is one, and will not build your engine much at all. This then means the next round could well be the same. You really do need to try and defeat a monster or two as quickly as possible in order to level up so you can take on more monsters and harder foes later on to gain the bigger rewards. In three rounds, this is tough to do. I do wonder if this should have been five rounds instead. The game over the rounds is lovely and quick, finished within 15-30 minutes depending on player count; so I think another couple of rounds would have been fine. And it would allow you to build up your powers so you can have that big meaty round you really need in this game to make the rest of it worth it. There can be a lot of tile placement and dungeon exploring without the payoff in some games.
Second, this is very much a push-your-luck game along with tile placement and dungeon crawling. Often, a perfect route will be available to you, but if another player escapes the dungeon first, this route is now blocked to you. You cannot pass through a room that has another player's paw print on it. If the other direction has a Dragon you simply cannot take on, or a trap you cannot disarm, this can be frustrating. And it leads to players jumping ship quickly and taking the sometimes only suitable route very early. This, compounded with the above point, makes the game quicker, engine building even harder, and the chance to develop interesting routes out of the dungeon even more difficult.
Outside of that, this game is a lot of fun. As mentioned, it plays very quickly. Turns are rapid: draw a tile, place it somewhere. The sense of trepidation as you build routes that may or may not be for you, and waiting to see if other players take them before you have the chance to do so yourself, is genuinely exhilarating. But also, as mentioned above, it's frustrating when it does not pay off for you. There is a fine line in push-your-luck games like this, when the thing you are pushing your luck against is other players, and not the game itself. It is fine to lose out on something to the game, but to lose out to other players can be annoying, and does create runaway leaders sometimes in this game. If one player takes the only available route that gains them coins and power-ups, and other players have to take either weaker routes or perhaps even take a nap, this then means in later rounds, that first player really does have a big advantage to simply further their lead.
I like the idea that when someone is out, the game then has a clock attached to it, with a limited amount of cards available to the remaining players to explore. This stops the game dragging and the player who escaped sitting there for ages waiting. But it does also mean the dungeon size is controlled largely by one player, the first one to leave. And the others have to go along with basically whatever is left. I think it would have made more sense to remove this rule, let other players build as they like so that the first player to go is less likely to do so as quickly as they know the other players then have an advantage to build for as long as they wish. There is still the advantage to go first by having first choice of route, but then it does not cause all the other issues mentioned. Perhaps there could be a bonus to the first player out, so there is still some incentive to get out, and not just take it in turn to build a huge dungeon. Limiting the number of cards to the other players when the first player leaves is a real issue for me.
That said, this game is still fun. It is very light and quick, and will appeal to younger players from the art, theme, and simple gameplay. But I find for myself, playing with my children, it can be frustrating, as I see a game that could well be an 8 or even higher, limited by a few issues that just don't make sense to me. I still enjoy playing and look forward to playing the game more. It is so quick to set up and play, and teaching new players is a breeze. It does have a lot of appeal. The rule book is not the clearest, though, so I hope the basic rules add some clarity for some. But again, this layout, perhaps delivered from a language translation, does cause some issues for me, along with the above points, about exactly who this game is aimed at. It is a little too hard for a proper family game, but the art, theme, simplicity, and game length suggest it is more aimed at a younger audience. It is perhaps simply a filler for gamers who want a quick dungeon crawl game with elements of engine building, push-your-luck, and tile placement. And you either need to go into it with the above understanding or one or two house rules to overcome this.
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