In “Reaping the Rewards,” I take a look at the finished product from a crowdfunding campaign. Stonespine Architects was originally funded on Kickstarter in July 2023, and was delivered to backers in the spring of 2024. This review is an updated version of my original Kickstarter Tabletop Alert.
The minotaur apprentices have one final project: constructing a dungeon to challenge Queen Amalia’s heroes to become Master Architect.
What Is Stonespine Architects?
Stonespine Architects is a game for 1 to 5 players, ages 10 and up, and takes about 45 minutes to play. It retails for $44.95 and is available directly from the publisher and in stores. The rules aren’t too difficult to learn, but there are several things to keep track of for scoring that may be a little trickier for less experienced players; I think a 10-year-old could play it but might have more trouble competing against more seasoned gamers.
Stonespine Architects was designed by Jordy Adan and published by Thunderworks Games, with illustrations by Damien Mammoliti, Lucas Ribeiro, and Diego Sá.
New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.
Stonespine Architects Components
Here’s what comes in the box:
- Tracking board
- 56 Market tokens (25 circle, 15 square, 16 oval)
- 10 Doorway markers (2 per player color)
- 10 Tracking tokens (2 per player color)
- 5 Dungeon frames
- 100 Chamber cards
- 18 Market cards
- 8 Blueprint cards
- 10 Reference cards
- 9 Jael cards (for solo play)
- Scorepad
- 30 Challenge cards
- 8 Goal cards
Each of the card types has a fully illustrated back so they’re easily separated, though none of them are actually labeled with text. Fortunately, the rulebook shows both the fronts and backs of each card type and you’ll learn them quickly, and the setup reminders on the reference cards also show the images.
The illustrations on the cards are reminiscent of those from Roll Player and Cartographers, other games set in the same fantasy world. Each of the rooms has at least one doorway and a pathway, along with some number of other features: monsters, traps, treasure chests, and stars. The rooms also come in two types, stone and cave. Even though all the rooms use a similar layout and the monsters are repeated, there are also often fun details added to some rooms: banners hanging on the wall, slime trails, and so on.
The wooden doorway markers are fairly big, a nice archway shape that matches the size of the dungeon entrances on the chamber cards. The tracking markers have unique icons on them so they’re easily distinguishable even for color blind players. (The doorways don’t have the icons, but they’re essentially interchangeable between players so this is less of an issue.)
The dungeon frames are a narrow cardboard frame made of two puzzle pieces, and while they aren’t strictly necessary, they help to line up your first row of chamber cards and add a little bit of flavor. They’re double-sided so you can choose whether your dungeon border is cave or stone.
The components are pretty much the same as what was in the prototype that I reviewed back during the Kickstarter campaign, so everything looks very similar. The one thing that is new is the box insert and the tray. There’s a small tray for the dungeon tokens that has its own lid, and then the box itself has wells to keep everything organized. The card wells are fairly deep—I would guess that’s primarily to accommodate sleeves—so there’s a bit of extra space in there currently, but maybe if there’s an expansion in the future it can be tucked in here as well.
The Shrines and Fountains mini-expansion, included for Kickstarter backers, adds 7 chamber cards to the deck that each include either a shrine or a fountain, which have additional effects when played. They allow you to move market tokens or swap the position of chamber cards—usually everything is permanent once placed. Some of the cards count as both stone and cavern.
How to Play Stonespine Architects
You can download a copy of the rulebook here.
The Goal
The goal of the game is to earn the most reputation by constructing a dungeon that best meets the common goal and individual challenges, while also building a connected path through the dungeon and matching your personal blueprint.
Setup
Give each player a dungeon frame, two doorways, and a random blueprint card, which is placed face-up. Randomize the starting priority, placing the tracking markers on the priority track. The second set of tracking markers goes on the gold track: for the first round only, place the 2nd and 3rd players on 1 gold, and the 4th and 5th players on 2 gold. Each player places one doorway on their dungeon frame in the space corresponding to the entrance shown at the top of their blueprint card.
Shuffle each of the decks separately, and mix up the market tokens face-down. Place one random goal card on the tracking board face-up and return the rest to the box.
Gameplay
The game will take place over 4 rounds, called “years.” For each year, place a number of challenge cards and market cards (based on number of players) face-up, and then fill the market cards with the matching tokens. (In the last year, you will not place any challenge cards.) Deal every player 5 chamber cards.
Everyone simultaneously picks a chamber card to place face-down in their dungeon, and then passes the rest of their chamber cards to the next player. (The passing alternates directions each year.) Each year, you will build one horizontal row of your dungeon, starting with the top row. The four cards in the row may be placed in any order, but once placed you cannot move a card. Once everyone has passed, the cards are revealed and players repeat, until everyone has played four cards—the fifth card is discarded.
Then, everyone adds up their gold—each chamber card from the current year has a gold value at the bottom—and adjusts their gold tracker. In addition, you add 1 gold for every treasure chest in your entire dungeon (including previous years). Now, players get a chance to buy market tokens.
The player who has the most gold is always the active player, until they no longer have the most gold or they pass. (If there is ever a tie, it is broken in priority order.) When you buy tokens, you pay the cost shown on the market card and then take all the tokens from that section of the card, placing them into any available chambers in your dungeon. Each chamber can only have 4 features total, whether they’re tokens or printed on the card, and you cannot cover up any existing features or move tokens once placed. The secret passage tokens are an exception—they do not count toward the limit and are placed on an edge of a card to connect two chambers that are otherwise disconnected.
If you decide to pass, you move your gold tracker to 0, move your priority marker to the first available space, and then take a challenge card and place it near your dungeon.
After everyone has passed, you clean up for the next year: discard the market cards and any remaining market tokens, as well as the leftover challenge card, and then repeat the setup for the new year.
Game End
The game ends after the fourth year. In the last year, instead of taking a challenge card when passing, you still move your priority token, and the first three players in priority order will earn bonus reputation. Place your second doorway at the exit shown on your blueprint card.
Score each dungeons as follows:
- Final priority will score 9, 6, or 3 points for the first three players.
- The top three places for the common goal card will score 15, 9, and 5 points.
- Each player evaluates their own 3 challenge cards and scores for each one.
- Add up the total reputation stars in your dungeon (note that some are negative!).
- Compare your dungeon to your blueprint to see how many of the demands were met, and score the corresponding reputation points.
- Score your dungeon paths:
- Each chamber connected to the entrance scores 1 point.
- Each chamber connected to the exit scores 1 point.
- Note that a chamber connected to both the entrance and exit will score twice.
The player with the highest reputation wins, with ties broken by final priority order.
Here’s an example scoring based on the photo above. I managed to get all 8 requirements from my blueprint, which is worth 20 points. The first challenge awards 2 points per trap on the left and right columns: 6 traps gives me 12 points. The second challenge gives me 3 points per pair of kobold and trap (not necessarily in the same room): with a total of 5 kobolds and 6 traps, I have 5 pairs, so that’s 15 points. The third challenge gives me 2 points per unique market token: I have 5 unique tokens for 10 points. I have 6 reputation points from the stars in my dungeon.
For the path, I did manage to connect every room to both the entrance and exit—the top right room is connected with a secret passage token. That gives me 32 points total (16 tiles connected to the entrance + 16 tiles connected to the exit).
That’s a total of 95 points—I would also score additional points if I’m in the top three for priority and the main goal.
Solo Mode
The solo mode pits you against an automated player named Jael, and uses the back of the tracker board. Each turn, you’ll choose one card to place in your dungeon and one to keep in your hand, to which you’ll add a few more cards for the next turn. The little icon at the top of the Jael card indicates which of your leftover cards will go into Jael’s scoring pile, and the rest are discarded. (Jael’s cards are not arranged in a dungeon—you’ll just count up all the various relevant elements at the end of the game.)
At the end of the round, after you’ve placed your four cards, you do a market phase, and the Jael card has a gold value at the top—you compare your gold to Jael to see if it’s your turn or his. On his turn, he will take specific market tokens and discard the lowest numbered challenge.
At the end, Jael scores points based on the values at the bottom of the cards—each one has a base point value, plus an additional score for specific items collected on his cards and market tokens. Jael also competes with you for the main goal and the final year priority.
Stonespine Architects is GeekDad Approved!
Why You Should Play Stonespine Architects
Stonespine Architects has a very easy flow: pick your card, put it into your dungeon, and pass the rest. Collect money to buy additional features for your dungeon, and then repeat! This aspect is simple enough that I think just about anyone could handle it.
The challenge—because of course it would be boring without some sort of challenge—is trying to make your dungeon meet all of the independent requirements, some public and some private. Let’s take a look at the all of the different pieces of that.
First, you’ve got the common goal. This is usually pretty simple: have the most of the specified monster, or maybe matching pairs of traps, or something similar. I think the most interesting one is the goal for fewest treasure chests, because those provide gold so it’s a trade-off between your earning potential and scoring. Since first place is 15 points, it feels important to keep an eye on that, but it’ll also depend on what else you’re working on. Since everyone’s dungeon is public information, you know exactly who’s ahead for this goal at any given time.
Next up is your blueprint card. The blueprint is set up so that each row and each column has two demands you’ll want to match. Four of these will be a room type (stone or cave), and the other four will be some combination of elements, whether that’s monsters or traps or treasure chests or stars. The score for blueprints will range from 5 points if you match at least 4 of the demands to 20 points if you match everything.
There are a wide variety of challenge cards, though there are some similar cards that just vary in the specific monsters. You might score points for each trap along a single path, or kobolds in one column of your dungeon. You might want rooms that are filled with features, or filled with slimes and oozes. Some challenge cards will also reference “clusters,” a contiguous group of chambers of the same room type. I’ve seen players score as much as 32 points from a single challenge card (though they’re usually in the teens), so these can be extremely valuable if you can get your dungeon lined up just right.
Finally, there are the paths. If you manage to build a perfectly connected dungeon, where every room is accessible and can be reached from both the entrance and exit, that’s another 32 points. But quite often it’s hard to get all the right paths, and the secret passage market tokens can be hard to come by, so most dungeons have a few rooms that just don’t connect, and if you don’t manage to connect your two doorways then you’re halving your score.
Now, put all of that together and each choice can present you with a dilemma. If a card matches your blueprint demand but breaks the path to the entrance, is it worth playing anyway? For the element demands, you may be able to make them up later by buying the appropriate token, but a room demand can only be fulfilled by playing the right type of card. You also have to pay attention to how much gold each card provides—not only do you want to earn enough gold to buy the market tokens you need, but having the most gold is the only way to ensure that you get your first choice from the market. (This goes for treasure chests too, since each chest will provide gold every round.)
When placing your cards, you can try to set things up to meet one of the available challenge cards—but there’s no guarantee that you’ll get the one you want. If you’ve filled your dungeon with slimes and oozes, chances are somebody else might take that slimes and oozes challenge card just to prevent you from getting it. Again, having the most money will give you a better shot at getting the challenge card you want, but you may have to make some tough choices between buying market tokens and forfeiting a lot of gold to take a card instead. There have been rounds where I took a chance on buying some tokens, but then ended up last in turn order for the challenge cards.
Finally, when choosing a dungeon card from your hand, it may be worth it to look at your neighbor’s dungeon to see what you’re passing them. The challenge cards are public information, so if you know somebody is collecting traps then you should decide whether a trap-filled card is worth putting in your own dungeon to keep it out of theirs. Late in the game, the right card could be the golden spike that connects their entrance to their exit—are you sure you want to give that away? You can also look at their blueprint card—if they absolutely need a cave chamber to complete their row, is it worth playing the last cave chamber in your hand? In one game I played, I had inadvertently taken all of the cards that had paths down to the following row—the other two players both expected there to be more of them, but then found that their third and fourth rows were totally disconnected.
It all adds up to a delightful puzzle. With so many things to juggle, it’s easy to miss things, thinking you’ve chosen the perfect card for a turn, only to realize that you’ve simply forgotten about your blueprint and have just put the wrong room type into a crucial spot. Or sometimes you get all the rooms you need, but find that somebody else maxed out their gold earnings and will be able to buy up several market tokens before it’s even your turn.
Stonespine Architects was designed by Jordy Adan, who also brought us the flip-and-draw Cartographers, one of our GeekDad Game of the Year Finalists back in 2019, and you can see some of the same DNA. I think Stonespine Architects is perhaps a little easier to learn the gameplay, but is still quite a thinky game when it comes to figuring out how to gain the most reputation. As with Cartographers, it’s a game where each player is building their own individual thing, but there’s enough interplay that it never feels like multiplayer solitaire.
It’s a lot of fun, and it’s also funny: when you end up with a room full of traps that nobody can get to, or a bunch of gnolls hanging out in the pantry, it’ll make you laugh. (Some of the rooms have amusing names in themselves–who knew a dungeon needed a breezeway?) If you like games about building out a map, especially with a bit of a puzzle to them, you should check out Stonespine Architects!
Visit the Thunderworks Games website for more information.
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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.
