Catharsis Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Catharsis, a cooperative dice rolling game published by Cyber Wizard Games. In Catharsis, players are working together to try and defeat the boss.

When I stumbled across Catharsis online, I had no idea what the game was about. But the art drew me in and I would have never guessed that it was a thematic boss battler with tons of asymmetric characters. So why is the game named Catharsis? I have no idea. But I was still keen on giving it a try. So gather up your dice, spells, and swords as we delve down into the gameplay of Catharsis.

Catharsis is a cooperative, dice-rolling boss battler for 1-5 players that takes about 45-60 minutes to play.

Games of Catharsis are surprisingly easy to learn. Each player picks one of the dozen or so unique characters to use, and the group then decides which boss they want to take on. All decks are shuffled and each player draws 6 power cards for their tableau.

At the start of a round, the top card of the boss deck is drawn. Usually, it will either be an Event, Trap, or Monster to fight. Events can be good or bad, either damaging the players or giving them some kind of boon. Traps are ways to deplete your resources and/or make monsters harder to beat.

Fighting monsters and the Boss is the heart of the game. Once a monster is drawn, the players start with an attack turn. They roll their six dice, with up to 2 rerolls, and then choose how to allocate their dice. The dice are used to activate powers on cards (much like in Dice Throne if you’ve played it). Many powers will do damage to the monster, let you alter dice, or give you some other kind of ability. Once used, a power is exhausted and flipped over.

After the players have taken their turn, the monster fights back damaging the