Matthew BaileyWhen I run any kind of themed event, there’s always the worry that because of the restrictions, I won’t be able to play decent games. But luckily, so far this year’s Halloween Spooktacular has been pretty fruitful, and I’m pleased to say that the upcoming cooperative deckbuilding card game Welcome to Susberg is no exception to the current stream of quality games I’ve played recently.
The game itself is a deckbuilding, card-based dungeon crawler that reminded me of a cuter version of Escape the Dark Castle, but with the added benefit of far more variety in the character classes.
You start the game by deciding who’s going to be your character.
Each one has slightly different mechanics. The Athlete is definitely one of the strongest, as he can trash cards to streamline his deck and also gains extra abilities depending on how many cards are in his trash pile. The Inventor gains energy that can be used for special abilities and has the option to “tinker,” letting them look at the top card of their deck and decide whether to keep it. The Artist uses cards of different paint colours and can mix these paints to gain extra effects. And finally, the Musician acts as a support class, generating music that can be used for additional effects and boosts for both them and other players.
Health and these various effects are tracked using a genuinely clever health tracker system, with another card placed over the top to show the current value. It’s a really neat solution. The only thing I wish is that there was a dedicated card for this purpose, as with the Athlete in particular you end up with a draw pile, a trash pile, a discard pile, and the health tracker — which can look like yet another pile of cards and make things a bit busy. Tokens would definitely be better here, but I appreciate that adding extra components would increase cost and complexity to manufacture. It’s something you could easily do yourself, though, and honestly, this is my only small quibble with the whole game — which is definitely a good sign.
You then build the deck of monsters that you’ll be fighting through, laying them out so that the weaker enemies are at the start and the tougher ones appear towards the end.
On your turn, you draw up to four or five cards (depending on player count) and use the actions on those cards to try and defeat the three monsters drawn from the deck. To make things harder, monsters have various abilities such as negative effects when drawn, increased costs, taunting (forcing you to attack them first), or mechanics that interfere with your turn. Managing all these effectively feels like a puzzle, especially since there’s no regular healing in the game. Players have to use whatever cards they have to balance attacking, blocking incoming damage, and surviving long enough to progress.
At the end of your turn, any monsters you’ve defeated reward you with coins, which can then be spent in your personal shop to upgrade your cards and improve your deck.
The game continues until either one player loses all their health or the group defeats the final monster. The difficulty is pitched really well — on normal mode we generally just about managed to win, while hard mode offers a much tougher challenge. It’s also a great length, lasting around 30 minutes (maybe a bit more), which is exactly what you want for this style of game. It definitely doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Overall, the kids really enjoyed it. It’s great fun, an excellent entry point into deckbuilders, and the artwork — which parodies and takes inspiration from various horror tropes — gives the whole thing a charming, cutesy vibe. The game is rated 14+, but you can easily play it with younger children, especially if you’re helping them with their turns.
Welcome to Susberg was a real joy to play, and the kids had a blast with it. Cooperative games always go down well here, and having a compact, travel-sized one to take with us is a big bonus. The game hits Kickstarter on October 21st — I’ll drop a link in the comments below and make sure to give it a nudge on the big day itself.
Disclaimer: A prototype copy was kindle provided for the purpose of review. I have not been paid for this review and all thoughts and opinion are our own.
