The Dark Eye: Aventuria Adventure Card Game Review

Critical Hits: Mix of RPG and CCG elements, accessibility.

Critical Misses: Completely unoriginal in almost every respect; grossly outclassed by similar games.

The Dark Eye is a long-running, German role-playing game system that reportedly outsells even the mighty Dungeons & Dragons in its native country. But other than the Realms of Arkania PC games back in the 1990s and some early mobile adventure games I remember very vaguely from the old flip phone days, it's a property that remains obscure for most of the world. Now, the provincial brand is putting up a stall in the card games market and offering the Aventuria Adventure Card Game named after the fantasy realm it's all set in. With a number of very successful games in this particular design space, to say it has its work cut out is an understatement. It certainly doesn't help its case that the setting, concepts, characters and storylines are just about as bone dry generic as they could possibly be.

BEHOLD. An elf.

Aventuria something like a cross between a very simple Magic: The Gathering derived CCG dueler and a more RPG-focused adventure game. The core mechanics all come from the former. You have a deck representing your hero's equipment and abilities, you discard up to two cards from your hand each turn to indicate "Endurance". You tap them to not only play cards but also pay to perform actions such as attacks. But there are also stats for your character including buffs and debuffs, D20 skill check rolls, and other variables handled by dice including attacks and defense. None of it is very complex, and in general it is a pretty easy system to pick up and play- it's all quite intuitive, really, but I'm also coming to it with over three decades of experience with this stuff.

At face value, it's all very competent but uninspired- there is nothing in the design that stands out as particularly novel or innovative. In comparison to something like the Warhammer Quest Adventure Card Game (in my opinion the bar any game in this genre should aspire to clear), the troubled Mistfall, the zany Assault on Doomrock, or even the Pathfinder flavor of this kind of game it feels Johnny-Come-Lately at best, dated and redundant at worst. If the setting were more compelling beyond a bunch of bog-standard fantasy RPG clichés without even a hint of D&D's more interesting ideas, there might be something here for those looking to explore it all with a decent, solidly written game.

There is one key differentiator, but I don't think it's really much of a good one. There are two ways to play this game- a duel and an adventure. The duel mode is exactly what it sounds like- heroes square off with their decks and duke it out. You can go to four players with it, but there is virtually no reason that I can think of that you would opt to play the game in this way over any number of card-based battlers on the market. There again, it's a competent design and it works. It's accessible to boot. But the game just doesn't make a case for itself.

If it looks like a CCG, plays like a CCG...

What's more, the duel mode feels like not much more than a tutorial for the adventure mode. Don't get too excited, because this variation isn't particularly good either. The adventure mode doubles down on trying to bridge the gap between card battles and RPG-style gameplay, and the designers went with contextualizing the battle portion of the game as the culmination of a couple of read-out-loud paragraphs and skill checks with varying degrees of success that impart assorted rewards or penalties depending on how the heroes perform. Each act builds to an AI-assisted battle, with the players attempting to beat a baddie and some henchmen before time runs out.

On paper, I like this notion of using the card game as a resolution system for an RPG story and I like how your deck builds organically based on the outcomes of the skill checks. That's actually pretty neat. The problem is that the game isn't as good as that idea, and there are already better games that create this sense of story-based character development.

Aventuria is the kind of game I almost feel sorry for. Its heart is in the right place, it has a handful of decent ideas, and it is completely non-offensive. But it also takes zero risks and offers almost nothing that can't be found in better titles that do take chances while also offering more interesting stories and gameplay. I could see this game having somewhat more appeal for young players or less seasoned veterans of these kinds of card-based adventure games or CCG-style designs, but even then I'd be inclined to steer these parties toward the superior games in its class.