Review: Guild of Dungeoneering – Pirates Cove

Guild of Dungeoneering is a game I reviewed some time ago. It’s a fantastic tabletop-style dungeon crawler with hand-drawn cards and kooky classes with a funny story. But it had one flaw…no pirates. Now Pirate’s Cove brings the buccaneering to the dungeoneering!

Review

In Guild of Dungeoneering you control the members of the eponymous organisation, adventuring for the riches and glory of their quite frankly evil boss. In Pirate’s Cove, the leader hears of some interesting treasure to find. So of course, it’s time for the chumps under his command to risk life and limb for a bit of the booty.

Pirate’s Cove builds on its base title and adds a ton of new items for you to play, available not only in the Pirate’s Cove zones but also in the main Guild of Dungeoneering game. From hooks to eye-patches, you’ll soon find yourself shouting “Arrrrr” with your guildies and these items bring in some nice goodies, such as Block All, a single shield that blocks all incoming damage.

You get new classes but unlike those in the main game where you pay to expand the guild, you find these in the middle of missions, starting with the Poop Deck and its new guild class, the Drunken Sailor. It’s a high-risk/reward class like the Barbarian, but with more abilities to improve its survivability and damage output. It’s better balanced than the other class as well, making it easier to play.

Then come the monsters, and they’re still completely insane and full of fun references, such as the One-Headed Monkey, and if you know what it’s making fun of, you get extra points with me! Pirates are a menace, Parrots light on fire and crabs are a bother, but they’re all hilarious to fight.

New missions and classes mean new songs, and they are still as funny as they were in the game. Sound effects are pretty much the same from the base Guild of Dungeoneering.

The downside to the game is that the expansion campaign doesn’t integrate with your current progress in Guild of Dungeoneering. I had already cleared the game so I expected to go into the new zone with my advanced classes, but that wasn’t the case. Instead I had to create a new game that starts at the Jungle Stage just so I could go to the new one. It was disappointing, forcing me to play with classes I had left behind long ago.

Conclusion

Guild of Dungeoneering: Pirates Cove is an excellent add-on that packs the same laughs as the base game, and makes that one better by expanding the item list. It could’ve used some better integration for existing runs, but it’s still as fun as ever.