I think most of us can agree that Matt Leacock has made some excellent entry-level games. “Pandemic” and the “Forbidden” games alone hit my table any time I attempt to introduce someone new to the obscenely huge world of tabletop gaming. Will “The Four Doors” be another Matt Leacock hit? Before we answer that, I want to give special thanks to Jason Schneider over at Happy Camper Games for sending a free review copy.
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1-5 Players, Ages 10+, Average Play Time = 30 Minutes
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Overview
This is a cooperative game. Players win or lose together.
The main area is a tower made of 4 door cards (open side up), with a beacon card (unlit side up) on top and the shadow level card on the bottom. This tower is laid out vertically, the four door colors (yellow, red, purple, green) are randomized. Everyone gets a character with a special ability and places their matching colored pawn on the appropriate door. Players choose their difficulty by placing an unused pawn on one of the spaces of the shadow level card. The 4 relic cards (victory cards) are placed nearby and the rest of the cards (player deck) are shuffled. 9 are drawn and placed beside the doors to start the game. There’s a bit more to it but those are the highlights.
Players alternate taking turns, taking 3 actions on their turn and then drawing cards from the player deck to be placed as shadow cards next to doors (this is bad). When a card is to be placed, you’ll match the color, then the shade on the bottom of the card to determine if it’s placed to the left or to the right of the door. If a side would add a fourth card, the door flips to the half-shut side and the fourth card is discarded. If it happens to a half-shut door, the door goes away and the tower shortens (among other things). This is very, very bad.
Players can draw a card (hand limit 5), move their pawn to an adjacent spot, give a card to other players, or play cards. They can play a single card with a lantern color that matches their current door color to remove a shadow card. They can instead play 4 cards of the same background color to claim the relic card of that color. Relics have special powers that help players out along the way. The goal is for players to collect all 4 relic cards, get to the beacon, and playing a Luminous Flux (a spell card) to flip the beacon and win.
There’s a bit more to it, but I’ll let you check out the digital rulebook on your own.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0790/9425/1840/files/TheFourDoors_Rules_WEB.pdf?v=1749521491
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Review
I’ll opt to keep this one short and sweet, as it’s really not all that complicated. I found it to be a “mini” or “jr” version of “Pandemic” / “Forbidden Island”. It’s got that “there’s too many things on this space now so bad stuff happens” mechanic (Pandemic), “discard cards to get a victory condition thing” mechanic (Both), “the board is disappearing” mechanic (Forbidden Island), and so on. Player abilities, cards that let players do special things…all of these things will remind you immediately of something you’ve (hopefully) seen before.
Turns are fairly quick, limiting downtime. Players will feel that sense of dread as shadows build up on doors potentially closing them. Cards are multi-use, being used either to go after relics or to remove shadow cards, or even as spells if listed. Spells are permanently trashed into the “Hollow” upon use though, so take care! The more spells you use, the faster the deck cycles pushing the shadow tracker pawn up the track faster. The board is small too…you won’t need to traverse the world to vanquish viruses. Players only need to traverse 4 door cards and a beacon card, after all.
Despite the small board size, movement felt weak enough to be a concern. With bad luck, you can spend half your turn going from the bottom of the tower to the top door just to address shadow cards…but with only 3 actions you’ll spend most just getting there unless you’re lucky enough to get a spell or a relic that helps move you around. The downside to a smaller board is that there’s less wiggle room when crap hits the fan through bad luck.
“The Four Doors” might be small but it’s scrappy…a worthy addition to anyone’s collection.
Buy: https://happycamper.games/products/the-four-doors
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Score: 8/10 (Great)
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