What A dungeon crawling simulation full of co-operative monster battle and loot grabbing – until you’re forced to turn against each other.

Players 3-6 players

Time 45 minutes – 2 hours

People Good friends familiar with Adventure Time who relish random payouts.

Available £22.50 here / $20 here

The Gist

Why we recommend it

Chasing endorphins has become a central part of life. Probably yours, too.

How often to you swipe down to refresh your Facebook or Twitter feed every day? You’re looking for that ounce of confirmation to get the through the day – that bump of novelty which brightens your day until the next once.

Munchkin is all about pumping you full of endorphins, with an endless supply of surprising encounters, novelty powerups and oh-so-pleasing-and-rare treasures. Set in the colourful world of Adventure Time, this edition of Munchkin incorporates the series’ void-staring humour and hyper-saturated palette of the series perfectly.

The broad ideas are easy to wrap your head around – and it’s made even easier by the fact the characters, items and locations are so familiar.

All the people sitting around the table are part of a dungeon crawling party. You travel from door-to-door together, slaying monsters, levelling up, and picking up treasure. First player to level 10 wins.

You might be Jake the Wizard who, in a lucky early-game draw, is wearing “Shiny Red Boots” (giving a +1 attack bonus) and wielding the “Demon Blood Sword” (a +6 bonus against demons).

To your left is Princess Bubblegum, who doesn’t have a class card and never received any weapons. She does, however, have a card that lets her carry around as many allies as she likes. “Flambo”, “The Morrow” and “Peppermint Butler” follow her into battle obediently.

It feels as if you and friends are writing your own episode of adventure time right there on the table. As you take turns to draw a demon card from the deck, you could face “Giant Chainsaw Goo Skull”, “King Worm”, or even the Ice King himself in any given game.

But, the fantasy starts to erode when players get close to level 10.

Suddenly, you’re less lost in the Land of the Ooo. You’re weighing up whether it’s worth helping your friends out that one last time. If you don’t help them out, you stand a chance of winning the glory. You could even use your “Naked!” curse card against them, which forces them to strip off their armor.

But, if they’ve also got a hand of Adventurer-sabotaging cards, your betrayal will cost you more than a coat of armour.

This is wonderful mid-game turning point of Munchkin. The mechanics don’t change at all, but it all suddenly gets much more Cameron than Corbyn*.

Every time I bring out Munchkin: Adventure Time, I know that I’m in for a fun evening of adventuring, loot gathering and make-believe. But beyond that, I have no idea what to expect.

In your first play through, you might only see a quarter of the cards in the deck. Each card is laced the Adventure Time’s silly humour and layers on addictive stat-boosting attributes that make games like Diablo, or even Pokémon so addictive.

There’s hundreds of ways to combine cards and hundreds of ways for them dictate the way you play. By the end of the game, you’ll become quite attached to your hero.

Sure, they’ve got way too many hats on. Sure, being followed around by sentient doughnut isn’t the best military decision. But they fought for you.

And they fought alongside so many equally silly heroes, too.

Come on, grab your friends.

You can support Best Play and get your own copy here in the UK or here for US peeps.

*For our American readers, please subtitute ‘Trump’ for ‘Cameron’ and ‘Bernie’ for ‘Corbyn’. It just sounds better with our politicians.