The Dark Quarter Components Overview and Impressions
When it comes to campaign games, or even standalone experiences with involved stories, I’m basically going to love them. That said, I’ve played a fair number of games that have a pretty good story, but the production quality is subpar at best, making the entire experience so much less enjoyable. If you’ve ever had the chance to play games coming from Van Ryder Games or Lucky Duck Games, you know the quality is always superb. With almost no knowledge of The Dark Quarter, I was hoping that at the very least, the quality would be great.
When you get the lid of the box, you’ll see two large punchboards FULL of tokens. Lucky Duck Games was nice enough to send me home from GenCon 2025 with the upgrade packs, so a ton of the chits here were things I didn’t need to punch out, but for the sake of this article I wanted to see what the punchboard quality was like. The tokens came out of the punchboard with relative ease – I had one issue, but thankfully didn’t tear any tiles. I like the thickness of the tokens, and they are all varied and have unique designs so you’ll never confuse one token for another.
There are also a ton of character tiles you’ll need to punch out and use over the course of the game. I’m always a bit frustrated with large numbers of character tiles because it takes time to shuffle through them all to find the ones you need. While I’m sure that’s going to be a problem here like it has been in other games, I do enjoy that the character faces on the tiles are very clear and easy to distinguish, despite the darkness (both story wise and color wise) of the tiles.
You know you are handling a nice production when the game comes with dual layered boards, and the 4 character boards you get in The Dark Quarter are all dual layered! I prefer this in story heavy, skill heavy games as it’s easy to keep track of your pieces, and you’ll never be second guessing where they need to go as your game drags you hours and hours into the night. It’s such a minor upgrade to some, but it’s the mark of a solid production for me.
Deeper into the box you’ll find a number of miniatures that will be used when playing the game. All the major characters and major enemies are available in miniatures form instead of tokens – this is a nice addition as it will spruce up your game area during the games biggest moments. The miniatures are more detailed than I’ve found in other adventure games, and while they are not the best miniatures on the market, they are above average in my experience.
Below the miniatures are a bunch of dice. These are nice, chunky dice with good heft – they are satisfying to roll and the iconography on the various sides is clear and consistent. There are also a ton of cards in the game, both location cards and item cards. I wouldn’t say they are the best quality cards I’ve ever used, but I’m not likely to sleeve them either. Average is what I would call them, and in this situation, average is just fine.
The art on the cards is really nice, especially the larger Tarot sized location cards. Despite the game having a dark overtone – both in the story and the actual brightness – I think the game looks the part in the best way possible, and some of these locations are absolutely gorgeous to look at!
What do I enjoy most about this production? The game comes with a dang insert. Far too often, large story based games like The Dark Quarter have an insert, but not one that’s conducive to setting up the game and getting into the story as quickly as possible. The Dark Quarter avoids forcing players to open baggies and baggies of pieces, and if you keep the box near the gameboard while you play, most of the tokens can remain in their designated spots until you need them, which is really handy.
Application based games are really divisive for board game fans, and I’ll admit to having my own concerns in the past. At the very least, though, the production side of The Dark Quarter is top notch, which leaves me feeling optimistic about the application integration into the experience.
We have more unboxing article for The Dark Quarter expansions, as well as a look at the miniatures pack and the deluxe tokens and metal coins packs too!
Article By Adam Roffel
