• Game: Chaostle
• Publisher: Chivalry Games
• Designer: Mark Jacobs
• Genre: Fantasy Parcheesi
• Players: 2-8
• Playtime: 60-180 minutes



• What's Hot: Big, outrageous fun; surprisingly clean design with no administrative overhead; ample strategy tempered with luck; bad taste artwork on the right side of kitsch; shark tank



• What's Not: Expensive; rulebook needs some work; can run an hour longer than it needs to

by: Michael Barnes

I’ve spent a lot of column inches here at Cracked LCD championing innovative design and progressive game concepts. I’ve argued at every turn that games can and should be critically praised as an artistic, expressive and culturally relevant medium. I’ve also lambasted escalating prices and overproduction as well as cornball fantasy artwork. But every so often, a game like Mark Jacobs’ stupendously overproduced and outrageously gaudy Chaostle comes along and completely monkeywrenches my modus operandi.

It turns out that this $80 game, which is essentially a fantasy-infused version of the traditional roll-and-move game Parcheesi, is one of my favorite titles of the year. It flies in the face of the kinds of cannibalistic, redundant and increasingly turgid fantasy game design that have become increasingly common over the past decade by almost completely ignoring the standard hobby game templates. It’s a brilliant design, but along different metrics. This is a game where its value is measured most accurately in smiles and laughs than my usual set of critical calipers.

Two to eight players can brave the dungeons of Chaostle, with each taking a couple of character cards and plastic miniatures depicting the usual fantasy types, including an awesome unicorn with laser gridlines and lightning in the background. Pegs track stats, health, and upgrades to one-step upgrades to skills and weapons. Each character has three unique skills ranging from protection from damage issued by certain kinds of opponents to being able to open a time portal with the intent of fetching a nuclear missile from the future to blow away the opposition. The goal is to get one or more members of your squad into the central space by travelling all the way around the board, beat down the walls of the Chaostle, and win the game.

Like Parcheesi, this is a roll-and move game where you can restart at “checkpoints” as you make your way around the board if you’re captured. You roll dice, and move that many spaces. There are a couple of twists. The path is not linear and it’s also three levels as depicted by big, chunky 3D dungeon pieces. The shorter paths might let you avoid fighting with other players, but are harder to traverse since you’ve got to have exact rolls to jump along the higher dungeon floors. Another twist is that there are no special spaces printed on the board other than a magical healing frog. All special functions and events are handled by the die roll including putting new characters on the board, taking extra turns, and rolling on the Happiness and Doom charts.

This is where the game simply goes nuts. A roll of Fate Five requires a second roll of three dice, which is referenced to the Happiness and Doom chart. These lead the player to eight pages of narrative events that are typically pretty crazy things like falling into a shark tank, capturing an enemy character to use as your own, being granted a last request by the troll that’s about the murder a character, or just getting some bad vibes. They’re inventive, funny, and add tons of stories to the game. It’s hilarious when your skeleton archer is constantly beset by sickness, disease, and other misfortune before the sharks get him. Some have complained that the tables are too harsh and an alternative set is available at the publisher’s Web site. I like the harsh ones.

Capture is a key mechanic in Parcheesi, and as such it’s present in Chaostle. There are no wandering monsters, there is no dungeon master, or anything like that. It’s strictly a PvP affair, and instead of absolute capture mechanics, the game introduces a simple combat mechanic. Each character has six weapons keyed to die rolls. When you’re in range (or think you might be), you roll a die and use that particular weapon. If the weapon hits, damage is applied, minus an armor stat. Combat continues back-and-forth between aggressor and defender to the death, unless the defendant elects to disengage when the attacker misses. It’s back to the start (or a checkpoint) for the slain character. The winner gets an upgrade.