Review: Lost Woods

What's going on everyone! I just got back from the Lost Woods and thought I'd tell you about my journey. ;)

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I've been putting off this review because I wanted to play ALL the modes of play before I came up with an opinion. I try to do that for any game that offers variants. Because of this, it sometimes means I don't get to play the ENTIRE package as quickly as possible. For me a week or less is what I feel is plenty of time to get to know a game for a review. In general cases this works, but for variants that may be offered it sometimes slows me down because I like playing to the full potential.

So as you can tell by the title I'm going to be reviewing a game called Lost Woods by Poppy Jasper Games.

As always, here's a little excerpt for the:

"The adventurers find themselves stuck in the Lost Woods equipped with items found around camp.  They must find a way out by choosing which direction to explore. Along the way they will find more useful weapons, discover wells of magic, and collect gold by defeating dangerous woodland creatures.  There are gnomes in the woods that will steal your gold.  Use a potion to change your odds. The player with the most gold wins the game when an adventurer finds the way out of the Lost Woods."

So the game starts out with players at camp in the middle of the "lost woods". Your goal is to get OUT of the lost woods while fighting off monsters, dodging gnomes and collecting gold, weapons and spells.

There are 3 ways to play the game listed in the book.

• The Original way - Basically what I just described above.
• Big Map - Use the extra map cards to make the map bigger AND add caves to the game!
• Survival Mode - Players control ALL 6 characters evenly separated and try to get them out before losing all your food and collecting a predetermined amount of gold combined.

The game plays pretty much the same in all modes but each other variant adds a little more. In terms of cards OR challenge which is always a good thing. Well maybe not ALWAYS but for this game, it is. The reason it is, has nothing to do with negativity but it gives you MORE ways to enjoy this awesome game than just one!

 As I said, the game starts out with all the players at the camp in the middle of the woods. Each turn you can Move, Explore and Battle.

• Move - When you move, you can go up to 3 spaces. 
• Explore - If, before your third move, this brings you to the edge of a map card you can choose a direction (North, East, South or West) and draw/place a new map card down where you are headed.
• Battle - After exploring you draw a token out of the bag. If it's an item(weapon, potion or gold) you get to keep it! If it's a monster(Blue bordered tokens) then you can either battle it OR leave it be. 

Once these three steps are finished, your turn is over and it goes to the next player. As you explore the Lost Woods you're going to be looking for the exits. There's one in each of the directional card piles and it's ALWAYS the last card in each stack.

If you survive long enough to get to the exit of any of the directions, you then get to fight the Guardian of the (N,E,S or W). This monster is the one I would consider the Boss. So really, there's 1 Boss to fight at every exit of the Lost Woods.

To actually exit the Lost Woods you MUST defeat the Guardian...and that can be a little difficult at times. The Guardians roll 3 dice all at the same time. a D4, D6 and D8. You, on the other hand, Still fight as normal by picking your weapon of choice and rolling that die against each result that the Guardian got. If you succeed, You defeated the Guardian!

HOWEVER, Your turn ends there so be careful if you're competing to get out because if someone is close enough, they can slip right by before you do!

Now, that pretty much sums up the game in a nutshell. You REALLY should check it out though because it's a truly amazing game. I just played a solo survival session today and I have to say, No game has given me the experience this one has for a solo game.

It's unique and fun through and through and that's saying something because.. well.. I died at the end. I got 5 of the 6 characters out alive. The last one died AT THE EXIT! Closest game I've played of ANYTHING in a while.

My opinion of the game:
Game art: I love it!
Play time: Depends on the mode but perfect timing over all.
Quality: VERY nicely done with a TON of bits! I think it was something like over 200 tokens! The dice are of nice quality to. I've noticed that they're mostly even rolls but one or two of mine seem to row low 90% of the time.


Here's some more wonderful pictures to check out. Afterwards be sure to PICK UP YOUR COPY HERE!
 

I WILL be playing this again and I hope VERY soon.

As always, Thank you for reading and take care! :)
-Tim