Doomlings is a quick-play set collection game that plays out through several ages, with each player evolving their own little beasty to score big come the final sunset.
We actually wrote about Doomlings about three years ago, when Jupiter got to grips with the Kickstarter version of it, shortly after its launch. So, it might seem a little odd that we’re cracking out the keyboard again for the same game. There’s a simple reason for that though, basically, we’ve now got our hands on six of its expansions: Dinolings, Multicolor, The Meaning of Life, Techlings, Mythlings and the extensive Overlush expansion. That’s a lot, right?
As such, we’ve dived back into the core Doomlings experience (with three more years of board game reviewing behind us) to reintroduce it ahead of us breaking down each of the different versions (which will be going live on the site over the coming months).
Anyway, anyway. Onward with Doomlings.
Doomlings is all about playing cards to build sets, with each card representing an evolution or mutation that often results in points at the end of the final era. Got a handful of kidneys? Great, you’ll get loads of points at the end. Happen to have the Tiny Dominant trait? Even better, you’ll get almost 20 points (a substantial amount) for finishing up with that one in play.
Before play, the shared play area is created, with an area for discards, a traits draw pile, the ages pile and then three piles which are used to show each of Doomlings‘ eras. Traits are shuffled up and made into a deck. A selection of ages are assembled, with end of era cards inserted into (roughly) every third of the pile. Each player starts out with a (reversable) gene pool card set to five. This defines their hand-limit which, if the cards fall right, can vary wildly throughout play. They then take that many cards as their standing hand. That’s it for set up, nice and easy.
Each player takes their turn, playing out the action on the age card that’s in play, playing a trait card and then stabilizing (drawing back up to their hand limit), and once all players have gone, a new age is drawn and the starting player shifts by one. Play continues like this until an apocalypse/end of an era happens. These tend to have negative effects on your traits, gene pool or cards in hand. Once the third era ends, Doomlings is over and everybody tallies up their points.
Doomlings‘ real beauty lies in its ‘It’s on the cards’ style gameplay. There’s almost zero reason to ever return to the rules after you’ve completed one full playthrough. Due to the modular (and clearly signposted) nature of the expansions it’s incredibly easy to expand the game. Points are kept incredibly light and incremental, with the exception being the Tiny card that I mentioned earlier, making for a tight game and ensuring that when people do get the chance to steal a card, they’re quick to decide which one they do steal. The inclusion of Dominant Traits, which cannot be stolen (and you can only have two of) means that there’s a great reason to mill through the deck, but even with that, it’s rare that the runtime will be too extensive as there aren’t too many combo cards.
Doomlings is available now from Amazon and from the Doomlings website.
