Go on a Cooperative Journey to Survive the Apocalypse in The Last of Us: Escape the Dark

Can you work together to reach a safe haven in this post-apocalyptic cooperative game that takes place in the world of The Last of Us?

Published by Themeborne, The Last of Us: Escape the Dark is designed for 1-5 players with a 60-120 minute playtime, and is the third game in their Escape the Dark game system. This game is based on the video game series The Last of Us — but does it hold up for players who are unfamiliar with it?

Gameplay

Each player selects a character and takes that character’s board and a single character die. There are three stats in the game: might, wisdom, and cunning. Each character will have these three stats come up a different number of times on their die, giving different characters different strengths. Every character starts with 14 health, and players distribute the starting weapons among themselves.

The game is played over a series of rounds, each round representing a day, and each day is broken into two phases. During phase one, each player may choose to travel to an adjacent location. There are five main locations on the board (as well as a starting location and the final boss location). Locations that have lines connecting them are considered adjacent. However, each location can hold up to four threat tokens. Some threat tokens will cover these travel lines, meaning players cannot travel between those locations until the threat token has been removed from that location.

After traveling, players may take the action phase. Each location has a camp card dealt to it at the start of the game. There are helpful, one-time-only actions players can take at camp. Alternatively, players can explore their current location. Each location can only be explored once per day, and if more than one player is at a location they must decide before drawing the location’s next chapter card, who is going exploring and who is staying behind. A player does not have to perform an action each round.

When a location’s chapter card is drawn, its story text is read aloud and then it is resolved. It might have players making a choice or rolling a die to see if they get a particular result, or it might send them into combat.

To start combat, players take the enemy dice indicated by the chapter card, set any to the stat sides listed, and roll any that are supposed to be randomized. Most enemies allow players to choose to listen and/or sneak before combat. When listening, any number of players may choose to roll their character die. If they roll a wisdom or a critical, they pass and may discard a certain number of enemy dice. If a player fails, another enemy die is added.

Sneaking is similar, only players are trying to roll a cunning on their character die. If they succeed, they can attempt to perform a sneak attack. If any player trying to sneak fails, they all fail and take damage. For sneak attacks, a melee attack is always successful, allowing players to remove one enemy die. For a ranged attack, a player has to roll an ammo die and if the result is a hit, then he is successful. However, in order to make a ranged attack at any point in the game, a player must have a gun card, and he must have ammo for it. Ammo can be found throughout the game to reload a weapon.

During each round of combat, each player may choose one of six actions. Range attacks work the same as in sneak. Even if a player misses while performing a range attack, he must spend ammo. His gun card will indicate how many enemy dice he can remove if he hits. When performing a melee attack, the player rolls his character die. If he rolls a result that matches one of the results on the enemy die, he can remove that enemy die. Some enemy die faces will show two results. Players must work together to match both of these results to remove it with a melee attack. If a player rolls a critical hit on his die, however, he can remove any one enemy die, including one showing two results. Players can also spend a melee weapon’s durability to improve their melee attacks, and when a weapon’s last durability is used, it is discarded.

If a player has an item card that can be thrown, he can use that to attack instead, which acts like a ranged attack. Another action is to spend a turn reloading if he has ammo.

Finally, all players can agree together to withdraw or to bypass. When withdrawing, combat immediately ends. The chapter card remains at the location and players can choose to return the next day to try again, but the enemy dice will be reset. Bypassing has players increase the day tracker by one, forces all players to lose two health, and adds a boss token to the board. However, a threat token is removed from the current location and the chapter card is discarded.

After all players have finished taking their combat action, if the enemy is not defeated and they are still in combat, then the enemy counterattacks against anyone who attacked him. The card will say how much damage he deals someone who performed a range attack against him and how much he will deal to a player who performed a melee attack. If a player’s character die showed a shield on it, he blocks any damage.

If a player ever reaches zero health, everyone loses the game. Defeating an enemy typically allows players to remove a threat token from the board and allows the players to perform two search actions (or four if they choose to add a boss token to the board).

There are four potential search actions. Each location has a stack of stashed item cards. Players can use the gain intel action to reveal the top face-down stashed item card. Most of these are helpful weapons, but there are also event cards mixed in which are harmless and discarded if revealed through gaining intel. The second action is drawing blind. This allows players to draw the top face-down stashed item card at their present location. If it is an event, they must take the negative effect written on it. There is also the raid action, which allows players to take one of the face-up stashed item cards at their present location, or scavenge, which allows them to draw one regular item card from the deck.

If players manage to go through all the chapter cards at a location, they get useful, one-time cleared location actions to perform. Players can also upgrade their weapons if they find the right items. Each character also has three goals to complete, which, if they succeed in doing, allows them to gain a special ability card.

The ultimate goal is for all players to move to the boss location on the same turn and reveal the card. This will be a powerful enemy. Any boss tokens placed on the board during the game are also revealed, and these will usually add more enemy dice onto the boss. If players manage to defeat the boss, they win the game. Other than dying, players also lose the game if they run out of days, or if a sixth boss token is placed on the board.

Review

We’ve played Themeborne’s other Escape the Dark games (Escape the Dark Castle, Escape the Dark Sector) and it’s been a delight to see how the system, and its presentation, has evolved and grown. The Last of Us: Escape the Dark truly feels like it’s taken everything that’s came before it and brought it together into an impressively addictive game.

Gameplay is still brutal and survival is far from guaranteed. Every choice feels like it comes with a potential risk, from losing time to push-your-luck. Time is valuable, and wasting searching to flip over cards sometimes felt unnecessary, but drawing those event cards could inflict some heavy penalties. Do you search alone or split up? Which items do you want to take with you? Which battles should you use your ammo or melee weapons on? All these choices felt impactful and important and led to lots of strategy discussion.

Every chapter card is exciting to reveal. Players constantly want to know what is going to happen next, and exploring locations feels fun, even knowing there’s likely something bad behind the next card.

A lot of the mechanics fit cleverly with what’s happening on the card or otherwise just make logical sense, especially in combat. This merging of rules with what is actually happening in the world of the game is quite impressive and immersive.

There’s a lot of variety from game to game as a lot gets randomized each time you play. Each location has its own stack of chapter cards, not all of which are used each game. There’s three different bosses and you don’t know which one is in play until you reach it. Which items you encounter will vary. This all helps to keep the game feeling fresh while also slightly altering the challenge each time you play.

The artwork is a unique, black-and-white style, that fits both the gameplay and setting well but has received an upgrade over previous games that makes it more pleasant to look at while still depicting a dark and stark world.

Not much is done to acquaint you with the setting, however. Being only marginally familiar with the Last of Us world, there were a lot of the basics we didn’t know, and didn’t feel very connected to some story moments. The monsters we could understand, but some of the human characters were more confusing. For instance, the Fireflies group was mentioned several times, but we had no context for who or what they were. Since this is a game that feels like it wants you to be engrossed in the story, with the care put into the individual chapter cards, this aspect fell a little flat.

This game does not feel like a casual game. There are more rules to learn and remember than in previous Escape the Dark games and setup takes longer. Still, it feels like a big game in a relatively tidy package, so it is a nice meeting point for players who want something more epic and bigger, and players looking for something streamlined and accessible. It doesn’t have tons of components, everything is easy to track, it’s got a relatively straightforward combat system, and it’s got some interesting choices and an engaging risk-reward system.

Pros: Excellent components, artwork and game style match the theme well, challenging gameplay

Cons: More complex than previous games in the series, theme doesn’t entirely carry over for players unfamiliar with the source material

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.