Published by Ravensburger, Chronicles of Light: Darkness Falls is a cooperative board game where players choose to play as Moana, Violet from The Incredibles, Maid Marian from Robin Hood, and Belle from Beauty and the Beast. The land has been clouded with shadow creatures causing darkness to run throughout the land. Disney’s heroes have come to help by completing their quests, fighting the shadow characters, and eliminating the vortex before it’s too late.
It’s about time we find ourselves with a Disney cooperative game, and this one has a modular board with new adventures every time you play. Even more exciting, Chronicles of Light has a team of all female heroes to save the day and was designed by a woman-led team, including Pam Walls (Game Designer), Shanon Lyon (Game Developer), and Alex Land (Art Director). Ravensburger continues to develop Villainous expansions, including one with a new Star Wars theme, and Lorcana.
What’s In The Box?
- 4 Movers
- 4 Hero Health Tokens
- 8 Dice
- 20 Action Tokens
- 2 Game Tokens
- 24 Shadow Tokens
- 10 Darkness Cards
- 42 Quests Tokens
- 1 Shadow Token Bag
- 1 Action Board
- 1 Team Health Token
- 10 Realm of Light Tiles
- 4 Hero Cards
- 16 Quest Cards
- 4 Player Boards
How’s It Play?
Players are working together as a team that can consist of Belle, Maid Marian, Moana, and Violet. Each character needs to complete their quest, which can be 1 of 4 different quests each time you play the game, and then as a team all characters need to go to the location where the vortex is and destroy it. Players win the game together when completing those tasks, but lose if there are no darkness cards left at the start of a day, or if the team health token reaches the last spot on its track. Since it is a cooperative game, everyone either wins or loses together as a team.
There are no turns in this game, rather each round in the game is represented by a player becoming the leader. This leader oversees the plan for the day and guides the group in deciding what actions each character takes. Actions are done by taking the token from the player’s board and placing it on the action board. Once you have performed 6 actions, the round ends.
The game board is made with tiles during setup and you will be moving from areas listed to achieve each players quest. Each player has 4 possible quests, but there’s also one randomly chosen for that game that may require additional setup before play begins. Players work together to either complete quests one at a time or all at once, but the steps to complete your quest, shown on its card, need to be done in numerical order. Whenever a character completes their quest fully, they gain their locked action token, and it can be used.
While moving around the board and picking up and dropping off item to specific locations, you might also have to battle shadows. If a shadow is present in a location, they need to be defeated before a hero can drop off or pick up quest tokens. Battle is done with dice, and multiple heroes can be present to increase the odds of defeating the shadow character. There is a listed strength on each shadow token, and you need that many hits to defeat it. After rolling your dice, each battling player can choose to re-roll any or all of their dice one more time.
While battling, you need to get the number of hits equal to or higher than the strength of the shadow character, but you can also take on damage if you roll a damage icon. You keep track of this on your character board, moving its health token down by one by each damage icon. If a hero reaches 0 health, the team health token is moved down 1, and that hero must heal before they can move, battle, or play any other action tokens.
If a character is not successful in the battle, they can start another battle right away by re-rolling dice, or wait for another hero to join them at their location to battle again. Shadows never keep partial damage, but rather return back to full strength at the beginning of each battle.
After 6 actions, a darkness card is reveal that moves the vortex to a new location and adds more shadows to the board. The leader badge is then passed clockwise to a new player, and they continue talking with the team to decide what 6 actions they should take for that round. Thus the darkness cards are a timer for the game and also slowly add more shadows and move the vortex around.
To win, you need to complete each quest for each active player, kill all shadows out on the board, and then destroy the vortex. The vortex can be weakened prior to the final battle, which weakens its abilities, but ultimately players need to all be in the same location with the vortex and defeat it to win the game.
The Verdict
Trust me, the game is even more fun to play than it is to read about. It has a bit of a Disney Villainous feel to it, as each player has their own quest they are trying to complete. But the quests are simplified, and it’s a cooperative game, so everyone is trying to help out everyone else.
I was afraid that having a leader might tilt the game toward what that player wants to do, and maybe mess up things for other players. And that can happen, but it didn’t effect the game for me as much as I thought it would. When I played, everyone listened to the other players and asked about certain action tiles each player had to do the best actions for everyone.
Players do better when going after multiple goals at the same time and taking advantage of having more than just 1 player by themself all the time. Shadows have a strength from 3-6, and while a 3 can be dealt with by one player, a 6 would be difficult for a single player to take care of by themself. Then, players need to make sure that opportunities to complete their quest, or even just achieve some of their quest, is done at the right time. Otherwise, it can take many actions to get players across the board to do what could have been done previously.
The battling is simple, yet you are not going to be successful each and every time. You can keep battling without using up actions to do so, but you might risk losing health, which will eventually get your character’s health token to the bottom, resulting in the team’s health token moving down plus you’ll need to take an action to heal. There is a chance that a player can win a battle with the hardest shadow by themself, but again, this would need a lucky roll. It’s far better, and more fun, to work together.
The game is really a lot of moving, battling, and then going to locations to gather items, and then meeting up with others to do a final actions to put everything together or to defeat a shadow after everything is collected.
It’s a short game, with the timer being determined by the shadow cards. It’s timed well, too, as the number of shadow cards is reasonably close to the time it takes to achieve all quests and destroy every shadow character on the board, depending on how well you plan. Plus, you also have to get everyone together to fight the vortex. I also like how you can fight the vortex after everyone has completed their quests but before the shadow cards run out, which makes it easier to terminate all shadows on the board. This also prevents the vortex from moving all over the board which, when it’s active and moving, makes it harder to chase after the shadows.
I like that it’s a game that my kids (7 and 9 years old) can play freely without me needing to take lead on strategy or explaining the idea of the game. They needed a brief explanation of the idea of the game and a one time explanation of all the action tiles, and they were good to go. They also thought it was very fun to choose different quests each time and rearrange the tiles so the map was different every game. What really warmed my heart was that, as she was choosing her hero, my daughter couldn’t believe that all the heroes were female. It was truly thrilling for her to play a game like this.
You can get a copy of Chronicles of Light: Darkness Falls (Disney Edition) at Target and your FLGS starting July 21st, with pre-orders open now. It will also be available at this year’s D23 Expo. It will retail for $29.99.
Images via Ravensburger
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