Hercules and the 12 Labors by Envy Born Games is a solo dice-manipulation game where you battle through the mythical 12 Labors of Hercules.

Face one Labor at a time using dice to attack by rolling specific values/combinations. Reduce the Labor’s health to 0 before it defeats you. By placing dice on your reward cards (which will increase as the game progresses) you can manipulate their values to – hopefully! – get what you need for a successful and powerful attack.

Each attack, the Labor dice progresses on its track towards the skull of doom, causing you damage on the way. If it reaches the skull, you lose. Some Labors will have multiple dice moving along tracks at the same time and part of the challenge is working out which to prioritise, as each will cause you different types of damage at different stages.

Defeated Labor cards become reward cards providing instant benefits, new ways to manipulate dice and gain bonuses. Most Labors use multiple cards; you pick one, which is where some agency enters an otherwise very luck-driven game

In this way, the start of the game does feel slightly more like your fate is in the hands of the dice gods as you have just one reward card available for the first Labor and so are very reliant on those first rolls giving you what you need to an extent.

Draw a ‘mood’ card each Labor and – depending on how our Herc feels that day – receive either a positive or (more likely) negative effect for the duration of the Labor.

Win by beating all 12 Labors and reaching the top of the divinity track to earn your seat among the Gods.

Flavour text for each Labor helps make the game immersive, bringing life to the story, though I probably wouldn’t reread it on repeat plays!

Verdict

This is a luck-driven game heavily dependent on rolls of the dice and the mood card drawn – even more so before you get a choice of reward cards. If you enjoy the chaos of games like Final Girl where you’re constantly reacting and adapting then you’ll likely love this. If you prefer strategising and control then maybe less so. That said I normally sit in the latter camp but really enjoyed my plays – it’s quite addictive and after my first defeat I jumped straight back in.

The game becomes a bit of a maths puzzle working out optimal dice manipulations. I really enjoyed this but worth noting if you’re not a numbers person!

A few rules could be clearer, like how to reset your divinity marker when starting from any chapter. On some cards I also found it tricky to work out the direction of the Labor dice, but these are minor niggles in an otherwise great solo gaming experience

Production quality and artwork is clearly 10/10!

Disclaimer

This game was loaned to me by Envy Born Games via the UK BG Review Circle for review purposes, but all thoughts are my own.