Disc Dungeon

Crokinole, but with dragons and disc-bound heroes

Disc Dungeon's core hook is genuinely unusual: it takes Crokinole, the century-old flick-and-shoot board game closely related to shuffleboard, and builds a fantasy tactical RPG directly on top of its physical, skill-based board play. Rather than shooting plain wooden discs, you're launching enchanted discs bound to recruited heroes, each carrying a distinct ability that interacts with the same flick-based aiming and power system the base game is built around. One detailed reviewer, whose own Crokinole experience was limited going in, specifically credits the game with teaching the underlying rules well, framing it as approachable "if you've ever played shuffleboard" while still layering real strategic complexity for players willing to dig into it.

Seven factions, each with a genuinely distinct identity

That same detailed review, logged at over 14 hours, walks through specific examples of how different the game's seven factions feel to actually play. The Elvish faction, they note, includes a marksman hero built for easier shot lining alongside a tree hero that grows in size and hit points once in play, functioning as a strong defensive board-control piece, while the Goblin faction's bounty hunter hero earns in-run gold on landing damaging hits, and its warchief can trigger critical hits by knocking allied discs into enemy ones. A separate, shorter review independently echoes the same praise, specifically highlighting "all the different styles of disc abilities" as a personal favourite element, and a third reviewer singles out the satisfaction of "landing the bear in a strong position" and chaining lightning strikes across grouped enemies, distinct faction identities converging into consistent praise across a very small sample.

Real tactical depth beneath the physical skill layer

Beyond faction variety, the fullest review describes a level of strategic nuance that goes past simply aiming well, including deliberately using a controlled amount of power and precise aim to force an opponent's disc off the edge of the board entirely, turning a specific enemy hero's dodge ability against them by manipulating exactly how far a shot travels. That reviewer frames this kind of emergent, physics- based outplay as a highlight distinct from the strategic layer most tactics games rely on, since it rewards a blend of planning and physical execution rather than either alone.

A campaign structure built around escalating dragon fights

Disc Dungeon currently offers five campaigns, each ending in a fight against a large, uniquely themed dragon boss with its own distinct powers, and the same detailed reviewer reports finishing four of the five available runs while still working on the fifth at time of writing. Layered on top of that campaign structure is a two-tier progression system: permanent artifacts earned during a campaign, which persist after it ends and grant broader faction-wide bonuses like extra hit points or improved defensive armor across every disc, versus temporary equipment purchased mid-run with in-campaign gold that grants smaller, hero-specific bonuses but doesn't carry over once a run concludes. That distinction between lasting, account-wide progression and disposable in-run resource management is a familiar roguelike structure, and reviewers describe it as translating well onto Disc Dungeon's unusual physical core.

A social format layered on top of the solo campaign

Beyond its single-player campaign structure, Disc Dungeon supports local co-op and head-to-head exhibition matches, including compatibility with Steam's Remote Play Together feature, letting a team of two players work through the game's Dragon League content together or face off directly without both parties needing to own a copy locally. None of the available reviews focus specifically on the multiplayer modes in detail, which is itself worth noting given how central they are to the store page's own pitch, leaving that side of the experience comparatively less independently verified than the solo campaign so far. That gap matters more than it might for a typical indie release, since Crokinole itself has historically thrived as a face-to-face social game played across a shared physical board, and how well that dynamic translates into head-to-head exhibition play or two-player Dragon League co-op is exactly the kind of question a four-review sample focused almost entirely on solo campaign progress simply can't yet answer with any confidence.

A promising foundation with an admittedly thin dataset

It's worth being direct about the limits of what can be said this early: with only four reviews, all of them positive and none raising a specific criticism of the game's current systems, there simply isn't yet an available counterweight to weigh against that enthusiasm. The game also currently has no tracked Steam achievements, meaning there's no broader player-behaviour data available the way there often is for similarly small early releases, to check how representative this handful of enthusiastic accounts is of the wider buying audience. That's not a mark against the game itself, but it does mean this recommendation rests more heavily than usual on the quality and specificity of a very small number of voices.

Final verdict

Disc Dungeon is a genuinely distinctive fusion of a century-old physical dexterity game and modern fantasy tactics design, and the small early audience willing to try that combination so far describes real, specific strategic depth in how faction abilities interact on the board. At NZ$15.75, it's an easy recommendation for anyone drawn to Crokinole, Carrom or similar flick-based games looking for a fantasy layer built thoughtfully on top, with the honest caveat that four reviews and no achievement data leave real uncertainty about how the game holds up once a larger, more varied audience has had time to put it through its paces.