CHAINSOMNIA
A chain link short of greatness
Designer: Shou Aoyama, Yukio Shimami, Yuso Taya | Publisher: Japanime Games
One-night, little children went to bed and the next morning they couldn’t be roused. An evil demon trapped their souls in his dream castle full of darkness and nightmares, chaining the children so they could not escape. Terrifying, right? Yet, add cutesy-like artwork and the whole concept is somehow darkly adorable? This is a mix that only Japanime games can successfully pull off.
CHAINsomnia,
under the covers of this strange but somehow compelling theme, is a dungeon crawler, where players take on the roles of the
children and attempt to escape the demon’s castle while fighting bad dreams along the way. The castle is composed of tiles, drawn at random from a stack, which players reveal as the game progresses. However, the addition of each new tile also requires players to draw from an event deck, which in most cases leads to nothing good. Most of the deck is composed of bad dreams, cards that will prevent players progressing further, until bad spirits are vanquished. There
are also ominous event cards, which trigger bad effects as soon as they are revealed. On a rare occasion, players can draw an auspicious event that can help the children with their tasks. To escape and so win the game, the children will need to defeat all bad dreams in the rooms and at least one player must find and reach the Wakeup tile.