Kinfire Delve is a tough but rewarding co-op card and dice game set in a dark fantasy world. With high-quality components, unique character decks, and a clever final boss, it offers great replay value, though its steep difficulty and tricky symbols may challenge new players
Written by CJ Brittain
Venturing into the world of Atios to defeat Callous seems like a simple enough exercise at the outset. Each of the two players is given a named seeker to play as and a deck of unique cards. In front of you are four challenge or event cards surrounding the big bad that you will have to face when you reach the bottom of ‘The Well’ (represented by the deck of cards still to be battled through).
Your cards contain abilities that can defeat or solve the cards from the well, and as you descend, the boons and detriments that these deliver to you will be crucial to your success or failure. With a nice little co-op element that spans all turns, whereby your fellow seeker can boost your card with one of theirs, and a set of dice to add some extra luck to your turn, it initially feels like success cannot be too far away.
And then the bad things start happening.
With an almost eldritch feeling around it, Kinfire Delve is a tough game where strategy is key, but luck plays a part. A few bad dice rolls, and you can be exhausted and running low on health before you even reach the bottom of the Well. And this is fine because we don’t like a game to be too easy, but the fact that it comes with an additional hard mode at the back of the rulebook does suggest that this might be a game for masochists in particular.
The setting is original but with clear inspiration from dark fantasy and horror in the creations that appear on the well cards as well as some direct Dungeons and Dragons references – yes, we’re talking about you, “The Hungry Chest”. The art of the cards is fun and sets the scene, although it might be nice if there were a more visceral way of representing the well that you are descending.
Or, indeed, sometimes ascending, as some cards, should you fail the challenge, push you back up levels, making your game even longer and harder. The logic behind this, in-game, is not clear, but with a fair amount of magic floating about, it’s perhaps best not to question this too much.
The final stage, should you get there, is to defeat Callous themselves (beautifully, the game uses gender neutral pronouns for the final villain in a way few others do and allows the game players to ascribe attributes to the big bad as they will). Callous is invincible until you knock out their surrounding acolytes, which slowly make the menace vulnerable to certain cards. Again, this feels straightforward at the start until the supporters of Callous find ways to regenerate, making some turns feel agonisingly frustrating as you get close to some form of victory before it is snatched away.
There can be only high praise for the components in this game, all of which feel of very good quality, especially the hero decks, which have beautiful shining gold decoration on them. The dice are original and fit with the rest of the theme.
The only main criticism (other than the difficulty which will be to people’s taste) is there is quite a lot of symbology in the game, many of them very similar and easy to confuse to there is a fair bit of referring to the back of the rulebook to understand an effect, even after a couple of play throughs.
Additional sets from the Kinfire Delve series allow you to add two more players, and with three potential beings to represent Callous in this box, there is good replay value, especially as you’re likely to lose the first time and will want to play again to defeat them!
Yes.
While the difficulty might frustrate some, there is a strong challenge in this game and great replayability, both from trying each seeker, to taking on different forms of Callous. For a small box, it packs a lot of punch.
You should try it if you liked Marvel Champions: The Card Game, a similar co-operative game with individual card decks, although Kinfire Delve adds more player cooperation during turns.
Designer: Kevin Wilson
Publisher: Incredible Dream
Time: 1-2 hours
Players: 2
Ages: 14+
Price: £25