It’s said that the twisted, winding catacombs beneath the prison lead to great treasures, the tomb of a warrior, and best of all, freedom. Do you think it could be true? Might as well try to find out. After all, what have you got to lose when you’re already in jail? While most of your crew continues to recruit goons and craft contraband, send your Seeker into the depths to find out what truly lies below!

What Is It?

An expansion to the worker placement game Lockup: A Roll Player Tale. (You can see my thoughts on the base game here!) The expansion adds more goals, traits, and tomes to the original decks, plus adds more items – which can now be improved when crafted, for additional points – and new goons – which give new ways to score. Besides the variety to familiar elements, the game gives players a Seeker crew token which will help them move along the catacombs board where they can earn loot and points. Finally, there are legend cards which serve as a new location where the last crew token of every player is sent to compete for additional rewards, and to try and avoid penalties.

Who Is It For?

Fans of Lockup: A Roll Player Tale who want to build on the experience with more variety / options / more ways to score.

Variants

Solo – The expansion adds in Seeker cards for the guards (you’ll play with 2 of them since one is added in each color) and a Legend location card, all helping to ensure that the guards stay competitive at all the spots!

PROS

  • More ways to score – opens up more opportunities for strategies
  • Spots with tunnels are more competitive as you’re vying for normal rewards plus the chance to explore the catacombs
  • The Golem and Shapeshifter goons help avoid over-dilution of the deck by counting as other goons when scoring, or letting you see more cards in the deck, respectively
  • Item improvements are a cool way to earn more points, especially if you have too many resources and need to spend them before you lose them
  • The 2 paths in the catacombs are both enticing, but still different enough at the same time – loot tokens are cool and could get you something you really need, or if you’re really fast you can score big by escaping early
Assets provided by Thunderworks Games

CONS

  • I like the concept of the legend cards, but sometimes they were a bit too random for me – sometimes they didn’t matter (like if the card about recruiting from the goon discard comes out in round 1) and sometimes you just had to assign crew and hope for the best (one card just makes you resolve the next random card in the stack without seeing it).

Final Thoughts

This is a nice addition to the base game overall! I wasn’t super into the legend cards, and almost forgot to even assign my last person there most of the time, because I just felt like they weren’t very exciting, and more often than not didn’t end up doing much for the strongest player – but that could also just be in my plays of it. The catacombs board was super competitive because there’s only a few spots on the board with tunnels and you only have one (weak) seeker. But it’s very cool, it gives you a lot more possibilities for points, and the racing element just works really well with everything else. Finally, the new cards for the existing decks are also great to add more variety and the goons in particular felt well-designed to avoid diluting the deck which can score on sets.

My Final Ratings:
Overall Game – 7/10
Replay Value – 7/10
Difficulty – 5/10
Aesthetics – N/A – I like the art, but can’t rate the presentation of this one as it was a prototype copy.

Additional Information:
Designer – Stan Kordonskiy
Artists – Luis Francisco, Gong Studios, Lucas Ribeiro, Diego Sá
Publisher – Thunderworks Games
MSRP – $24.99
Website

*I was provided a prototype copy of this game to do this preview*
*All components shown are subject to change*

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