Tiny Epic Dungeons Adventures: my review so far. Chapter One keeps beating me down

I own every Tiny Epic game that's ever come out. They're small-box games that punch well above their size, and the original Tiny Epic Dungeons is one of my favourites of the whole line. Scott Almes has designed every one of them, including this one. Gamelyn Games put the series out originally, though Tycoon Games have taken over the line since, and they're the ones behind Adventures. So when Tiny Epic Dungeons Adventures turned up, I was straight in. This is where I've got to with it: I'm four attempts deep into the first chapter, I still haven't beaten it, and I genuinely don't know yet if I'm enjoying myself.

A dungeon that plays great solo

It's cooperative, so it supports solo play out of the box, my preferred way to play currently, rather than switching into some bolted-on single-player mode. You just control two heroes instead of one. You build the dungeon room by room on a seven by seven grid, working through goblins, then a couple of mini-bosses, then whatever big bad is waiting at the end, one you don't even find out until you get there. Loot and levelling happen along the way, dice decide the fights, and the whole thing runs on a shared timer that also ticks the enemies' abilities forward. I have never once beaten a final boss in this game. I still think it's brilliant.

What Adventures changes

Adventures keeps that same core system and even lets you blend it with your original Tiny Epic Dungeons content, but out of the box it swaps the procedural dungeon for eight curated chapters, each one sealed in its own envelope. You flip open a starter book, build the dungeon on a fixed layout instead of a random one, and work through that chapter's objectives, closer to a legacy game or Gloomhaven than the original's roguelike shuffle. Goblins are out, replaced by eight mobs per chapter plus a chapter-specific boss, and there are mini and larger expansions built to slot straight in.

Chapter One won't let me through

Every run goes the same way. Early on it's genuinely fun, I'm finding loot, things feel like they're going well, and then the mobs start piling up faster than I can deal with them, I get cornered, the timer runs out, and that's the game over screen. Four attempts, four losses. I can't tell yet whether that's the chapter working as intended or me getting a rule wrong somewhere, and I've still got seven more chapters to go even if I do get past this one. What I'm actually unsure about is how loot and character progression are meant to carry across all eight chapters, since each session already hands out a decent amount of gear on its own. Maybe there's a reset or a downgrade built in somewhere down the line. I haven't seen it yet.

Early loot, mounting pressure, cornered, dead. Four times in a row.

I'm going to keep playing, get Chapter One sorted one way or another, and come back to this once I've seen more of the campaign.