Delve into a dark world of horror, magic and survival. That is the promise of Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift by Dragon Dawn Production. This is going to be a big dungeon crawl game that has a number of minis, a Rondel action selection, action points, and a dungeon crawler without that much luck to it. Does it live up to that hype? To see, we need to look at how the game plays.

How to Play Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift

There is a lot going on in this game, and I want to do it justice, but there is just too much to talk about everything that is going on. So let’s just go over the basics of what happens. Perdition’s Mouth is a cooperative dungeon crawling game. Players take on the roles of heroes, from tanks, to spell casters, rogues, and more trying to get through either a campaign or one off scenario.

Players, on their turn, use action points to move around a Rondel and select the action that they want to do. This can be move, charge, attack, a special action, rest, defend or a combination of those or variation on those. And that is the characters action for the turn. It means you can really plan out everything that you are doing, and you know how much you can do because of how many action points you have. Those are what you spend to move around the Rondel or move across terrain.

Then after the players go, the insectoids and cultists go. They also have a Rondel which determines what action they take. And unlike the player characters who activate a Rondel action, the cultists and insectoids activate all of them they pass over. So you can get some really big turns of spawning monsters, them moving and attacking.

In the end, the players goal is to get their characters off of the map and ready to move onto the next scenario, if you are playing the campaign version.

What I Didn’t Like?

The rule book for Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift is just okay, and this is the revised edition. The issue with it is somewhat that there is a lot to it. And there is a lot to it without there being an index at the end. Give me an index to find things quickly while I’m playing and learning the game. The game itself is pretty easy to follow when you play. But the rules could be done better for learning.

That’s my main negative. I do think for some, the darkness of the theme will be too much. It leans into that Kingdom: Death Monster thing where it is dark and shocking for the sake of being dark and shocking. For me, it doesn’t bother me that much, I get that this is supposed to be a grim and dark world. But at times, it seems like a bit too much.

What Did I Like?

I really like that all the characters are different in the game. In my campaign I ran a tank and a caster. The caster has less defense, less healthy, but some more powerful abilities, especially with movement. And in a game where you want to get out of the scenario, not always kill everything, movement is good to have. And of course, a caster can attack from range. The tank needs to get in there and take those hits when they can. And it feels like a good balance of characters.

I also like how simple the enemies are to activate. You flip a card and see how many spaces they move on their Rondel. And then you activate them pretty easily. So even though they might move a random number of spots on the Rondel, you can kind of guess what they might do. And then a card flip for an attack modifier makes it simple to play them. You don’t need a ton of rules to figure out what each enemy does.

I also like that characters use cards to boost their actions. And you play them out from your hand. But the enemies use a modifier deck. It means as a player, I can pick precisely what I am doing. But as the enemies attack me, I don’t know what they are going to do exactly. It is the right level of randomness. I know mainly what the enemies will do, but sometimes they’ll get through and do more than expected.

But, you can see more thoughts on Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift in the video I did on it below:

Who Is This For?

Dungeon crawler fans and euro fans. I think if someone is looking to move the more perfect information Euro style games, this might work very well for them. Because Perdition’s Mouth is a game where you do know almost all the information.

I also think this will work well for people who want that darker game like Kingdom: Death Monster, but don’t want the massive commitment. The fact you can play a one off for Perdition’s Mouth is nice. And then if you want a campaign, you can have one, but it isn’t hundreds of hours to get through it.

Final Thoughts on Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift

I do have quite a number of things I like about the game. But one negative, and it’s not a negative of the game, but more so of the space, which I haven’t mentioned. Perdition’s Mouth is a dungeon crawl game. So when I look at it, I need to compare it to other dungeon crawl games. And I do think this one is good, but it isn’t upper echelon for me.

On the flip side, it likely will stick in my collection for at least a while, because of one big thing. I can play it as a one off. It is nice for a few reasons, you don’t have the randomness, but the big one is I can pull it out and play without committing to a big experience. If I want to, I can play a short campaign. Gloomhaven was 150-200 hours of my time, Perdition’s Mouth will be less to play a campaign.

Finally, and this could be in the things I like, I do like the no dice. That’s one thing that I’ve found is that something like Sword & Sorcery compared to Perdition’s Mouth, I don’t miss the dice at all. I don’t strongly dislike dice, but it offers a more interesting long term puzzle for the game.

My Score: B-
Gamer Grade: B
Casual Grade: C-

Notes:

Generally for casual gamers, I am going to rate these bigger and heavier games lower. I think a casual gamer learning this would be a difficult experience. I also think that Perdition’s Mouth with an experienced teacher and casual gamers wouldn’t be too bad. But purely everything being done by a casual gamer, it’d be hard for them.

Also, Thank You to Dragon Dawn Production for sending me a copy of the game to review.

Send an Email.
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.