• Game: Cave Evil
• Publisher: Emperors of Eternal Evil
• Designer: M. Brinkman, J. Hartman, N. Hayden
• Genre: Necro-demonic Dungeon Brawl (says so on the box!)
• Players: 2-4
• Playtime: 90-180 minutes



• What's Hot: Brilliant and unique appropriation of Black Metal themes and aesthetics; old school fantasy gaming values; compelling strategic and tactical depth including great resource and exploration mechanics; virtually zero standard fantasy tropes



• What's Not: Expensive and likely subject to limited availability; some components aren’t up to current standards; subject matter may scare off the weak and cowardly

by: Michael Barnes

When I saw the early advertisements for Cave Evil, a new indie game with a scant 500-copy print run, I knew right away what its designers were up to. With its almost unreadable logo rendered in a pointy, elaborate script, a gray scale color palette, and various demons and other abominations rendered in stylistically crude illustrations, Cave Evil is the first board game that draws direct inspiration from the aesthetics and subject matter of Black Metal.

If band names like Emperor, Darkthrone, or Mayhem mean anything to you then you simply must plunk down the $70 and get one of these limited copies- you’ll love how the game captures the grim, necro-cult spirit of the music and its imagery. If you have no idea what the Black Metal genre is all about or if you can’t stand its vile, demonic sound, then Cave Evil may still appeal to you as a highly original- yet defiantly old-school-Gygaxian dark fantasy game that has nothing to do with post-Tolkien anything. There are no elves, dwarves, or orcs here. Greater Crud, Stabbists, Bat Webs, and Necromonks stalk these caves and “good” simply doesn’t exist. It’s all evil, all the time.

Cave Evil is, as it says on the box, a “necro-demonic dungeon brawl”. Effectively, it’s a deathmatch wherein each player controls a necromancer that invokes, hires, or subdues minions to form up to six squads to skulk around a subterranean labyrinth surrounding a pit. These squads can be used to recover treasures and resources, explore the environs by excavating, or to sally forth and annihilate the opposition. The game has a very distinct lineage in terms of gameplay. It feels like equal parts Titan and Wiz-War but a three-tier resource mechanic and a slightly higher degree of detail make it something quite unique, particularly coupled with the one-of-a-kind Black Metal atmosphere.

Don’t bother with the quick start guide because it’s an indecipherable mess. The main rulebook is are fairly complex, and as with many things about Cave Evil they feel like something out of an Avalon Hill or SPI game circa 1982. Like older games, it’s also a little on the longish side provided there’s not an early elimination. These are not necessarily negatives, but those looking for an ultra-developed Fantasy Flight rules set or a streamlined Eurogame won’t find it here. It’s also oddly appropriate that the game is old fashioned since atavism, primitivism, and medievalism are common themes in Black Metal music. It makes sense that this game is engaged in raising classic gameplay styles from the dead.

Each Necromancer has a hand of cards that are gathered from four different stacks (Bribe, Construct, Summon, or Abyss) which basically describes how the creatures, spells, and items in each respective category are brought into play. Resources found in the caverns or gained through discarding cards are metals, gore, and Shadowflame that are used respectively to buy, build, or conjure the game’s infernal denizens. The Abyss deck is special, featuring more random events and potentially more dangerous cards. Events are typically end-of-turn occurrences that randomly spawn wandering monsters or loot at spawn points or do really nasty things like swapping minions between players

On a turn, a necromancer gets to choose either a draw from one of the decks or the top discard. The Necromancer can spend resources to invoke a card, adding it to his stack or creating a new one in an adjacent hex. Each stack can move equal to the slowest creature in it, and each is sort of an aggregate of all statistics and functions so there is clearly strength in numbers. Squads with pick axe symbols can also excavate (or collapse) areas of the cavern, which results in a card draw indicating what sort of room is discovered and added to the map as well as any special effect that occurs. Squads carry their own resources so ferrying them back to the necromancer is often important, but they can also use whatever currency they’re carrying to hire wandering monsters. Failing that, they can just beat them down and force them to join the ranks.