Dig Your Way Out: Review
Information:
Mechanics: Action Points, Area Movement, Take-That, Hand Management
Player Age: 14+Player Count: 2 - 6 PlayersTime to Play: 40 - 45 Minutes
Game Designer: David Simide
Player Age: 14+
Game Designer: David Simide
Introduction:
Dig Your Way Out is a hand management game with one goal in mind, escaping prison. Once you have gained enough tunnel points you have succeeded and dug your way out of prison. This will be done by joining gangs, searching for items/weapons and crafting or buying digging tools.
Game Anatomy:
Game Board:
The game board represents the prison with five open locations (and solitary confinement), places for each gang, and designated places for the search deck, each tool card and knife card.
Prisoner Boards and Standees:
Each prisoner board is double sided with a male and female character. All the player board sides have a matching standee for players to chose. The player boards come with reminders of the win condition, hand size, available actions, limitations of beatings and crafting options.
Background Cards:
Background cards have a scenario that will allow you to activate them during the game. It can only be activated once but you will gain the bonus of the revealed card if you are a member of the gang listed.
Tool Cards + Knife:
Tool cards can be converted into tunnels by digging, gaining you the amount of tunnels listed on the card. The spoon is gained by stealing from the cafeteria and the pickaxe and shovel will need to be crafted or bought from the recreational area. The knife is a weapon used in extortion that can be gained by crafting or purchasing.
Search Cards:
The deck of search cards contain a mix of craftable items, weapons, action cards, rare items for selling and accessories for gaining access to gangs.
Gang Cards:
There are six gangs available for players to join, after all, prisons are a diverse place. The gangs have special abilities that you can use. To join these gangs you will have to discard matching accessories to keep them engaged in protecting you. All the gangs have a specific focus with their special bonuses like the Triad focuses on crafting, where the Bikers focus on movement.
Cigarettes and Beating Tokens:
Cigarettes are your currency during the game, this is prison after all. Cards contained in the search deck have the number of cigarettes they are worth if sold. These cigarettes can later be used in purchasing the knife, shovel and pickaxe.
Beating tokens are gained through losing extortion and are removed by visiting the infirmary. One beating token will prevent you from crafting and two beatings will prevent you from digging and crafting.
Setup:
- On the designated board sections place a face-up pile for each the shovel, pickaxe, knife and spoon.
- Each gang will be shuffled and placed on their respective gang pile.
- Shuffle the search deck and place it facedown in its respective location.
- Place all cigarette and beating tokens within reach of the players.
- Each player picks a standee and matching player board.
- Each player gains a background card and keeps it private.
- Each player will be dealt a starting hand of three search cards.
How to Play:
Players will perform up to two actions on their turn out of a mix of basic and place actions. One action can be performed twice as the turn. Once a player has met the threshold of tunnels on the turn, they win the game and successfully escape (below is an image of tunnels per player count).
Basic actions:
Search:
Search can only be performed once per turn and is simply drawing cards from the search deck equal to the number depicted in the location you are in. This will either be 1, 2 or 3 cards. The maximum hand size is 10 cards so if exceeded, you must discard down cards at the end of your turn.
Join a Gang:
Gangs can be joined by discarding a certain amount of accessories without replicating the same type (see chart below). The player will then draw the top card of that gang, they can only have one attached and any previous gang is discarded when gaining a new gang card.
Move:
There are two methods of movement. The first method is the cautious movement which is using both actions to move to any location of your choice. Instead, you can do the simple move which is rolling a dice and then moving to one of the two locations with this number present. Each location has two or three movement results allocated to it.
Play an action card:
Reveal an action card from your hand, resolving its effects then discarding the card.
Extortion:
Extortion is the combat system in this game and can only be done once a turn. A player can extort another player in the same room as them, when extorting they will ask for the tool they want from the other player and play a weapon (blade or knife) in front of them. The other player will choose to give that player the tool or commence combat. Combat works with the defending player playing a weapon card face-up in front of them. The other player will do the same, this will continue back and forth until one player cannot. That player who cannot play a card on their combat turn will lose and gain one beating. The winner will receive either the card originally asked for or a random card from the losing hand.
Craft:
Crafting cannot be achieved in the cell block or shower location. The crafting action is used to create knives, a pickaxe, or shovel out of common items from the search deck.
Place actions:
Place actions are special actions that can only be activated if the player is in that location.
Dig:
Digging is performed in the cell blocks where the player can discard a tool and gain tunnels equal to the value at the top of the card. This cannot be done if you have two beatings.
Steal a spoon:
Gain a spoon from the spoon pile if you are in the cafeteria.
Heal:
At the infirmary you can remove these debilitating beatings one at a time.
Sell:
At the recreational centre you can buy and sell. Selling allows you to discard any number of cards from your hand and then gain the cigarette total listed on these cards.
Buy:
Buying works in reverse where you are allowed one purchase per action and must discard cigarettes equal to what you want to purchase:
- 2 cigarettes for 1 knife or 5 cigarettes for 2 knives
- 6 cigarettes for a pickaxe
- 8 cigarettes for a shovel
Variants:
Team Mode:
Team mode allows players to play in two teams with varied actions to suit this new mode and a new exchange action. This will be played on the other side of the board that including two separate prison cells for the teams.
Michel and Michelle:
This variant is used for adding more extortion into the game as Michel/Michelle will wander the map to start trouble. This is great for the two-player mode or adding more chaos at a higher player count.
Officer Buster:
Officer Buster prevents illegal actions by sending players caught performing these actions in his space to solitary confinement. These actions include extorting, stealing a spoon, crafting, digging, buying and selling. There are ways to bribe Officer Buster but once you begin the process you have to pay the cigarettes (amount determined by a dice roll) otherwise he will beat you or send you to confinement. Players can also move Buster to the location they are blocking players from doing those illegal actions by calling him to them as a new action.
Final Thoughts:
- Specific focus of the gangs.
- Great iconography throughout the board to remind you of the options avaliable to you and the costs involved.
- Double-sided art on the gang cards and player cards representing male and female.
- Take-that game
- Sounds like a lot of actions but doesn’t feel this way when playing.
- Three built in variants.
- Fun party atmosphere.
- Great art.
Dig Your Way Out looks like there is too many rules for the atmosphere it’s targeting, the large player count casual/party game atmosphere, but gladly that’s not the case. The game perfectly accentuates this atmosphere using fun art, great components (particularly the cigeratte tokens) and use of iconography. The race to tunnel points is filled with backstabbing and slowing the other players down, while joining gangs adds a good layer of strategy that allows for certain play styles to amplify. As long as players don't mind negative interaction than Dig Your Way Out is a riot of a time.
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