Journey of Fortune: Dragon’s Fire

Back when I was very young, a game of Snakes and Ladders was captivating entertainment. The physical action of rolling the dice and the easy-to-follow rules were enough to hold my attention.

As an adult, I require more than a game of mindless dice-rolling to get my kicks. Sadly, Journey of Fortune: Dragon’s Fire might as well be called Random Number Generator 2011 for all the enjoyment it holds for anyone over the age of four.

The aim of this multiplayer-only boardgame is to rescue the princess from an annoyed dragon. In true boardgaming fashion, this involves rolling a dice (or in this case, spinning a spinner with dice numbers on) and moving your piece across the board.

Each square has a special property such as boosting your stats, awarding gold, automatically spending gold (to add to the stats), teleporting an hour back for no sane reason, or fighting monsters.

Fights are performed by giving the spinner a whirl and betting a certain amount of mana on the outcome. Should it land on a useful icon like a wall of fire (not the utterly pointless lightning), then you damage a monster relative to the amount of mana wagered. Failing to land on an icon doesn’t cost anything, though, so there’s zero risk if you bet a lot.

In theory, combat involves limited tactical planning with a single bet enabling all spells, two defensive magic, and three or more lighting up only offensive spells.

It would be tactical, but there’s no reduction in chance – regardless of the amount of mana it appears that you always have the same chance of getting something.

With no risk comes no tactics and with no tactics comes boredom.

Monsters, especially the later ones, can take a good ten to 20 minutes to kill depending on how unlucky you are with dice. Even worse, there’s literally no chance of killing the dragon unless you land on money and shop squares.

Get killed by a tough monster or during the unskippable fights that break out if another player lands on your piece and you start right back at the beginning (albeit with your stats intact), artificially extending this dull game even further.

At least the design of the board is nice, with gently glowing LED lights and interesting art design calling to mind the fruit machine/game cabinets of the early '80s.

But all the attractive artwork and design of the board can’t cover up tedious, shallow gameplay.