DC Breakout Arkham Asylum 

• Designers: Brian, Sydney and Geoff Engelstein 
• Publisher: Wizkids
• Players: 2-6
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30-45 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Make a mad dash out of Arkham Asylum – again! You’ve broken out before, though, so to make things more interesting, you’ve challenged your fellow rogues of Gotham City to a race to freedom. Can you make your daring getaway before your opponents?

In DC Breakout: Arkham Asylum, each player gets five villains from Batman’s history, then chooses two teams of two villains, with each team competing in one of two races. Hundreds of possible duos exist, with each villain having a unique power that can be supplemented with gadgets to gain the upper hand over your rivals. Whoever wins the second race wins the entire game.

To set up, shuffle the villain deck and deal 5 cards to each player. Make a random track of 3 non-Asylum map tiles (can be either orientation – but make sure the short sides match up) and then place the Asylum at the end of the track, placing the top card of the Villain deck on that space.  Each player selects a team of 2 Villains from their hand, and then these teams are simultaneously revealed.  The appropriate standees are placed together in a single base. Each villain has a special power, and players should take turns to read all these aloud so that everyone knows who can do what.

On a turn, the active player rolls the die and then moves forward that number of spaces, with the exception that you can always choose to stop on a gadget space and end your forward movement there.  The other spaces are Squares, Circles and Triangles – each shape might interact with the Villain powers.

If you end on a Gadget space, and you have fewer than 3 Gadget cards in your hand, you draw a Gadget card.  Gadgets remain secret until played, and they have varying abilities!

Keep playing until all players but one have escaped, that is they have moved off of the third map card and into the Armory.  Once escaped, that player’s turn is skipped and all of their Villain effects no longer are in play. When you enter the Armory, move to the furthest space possible (this keeps track of order of finish).  Then, discard down to 1 Gadget card.  Now, draw a number of cards as shown for your finish space and keep the smaller number shown.  Unchosen gadget cards are placed under the deck.  Finally, you may exchange one of your unused Villains with the one face up on the Armory board.  The villain that you discard can now be exchanged with by later finishing players.

When all but one player has reached the Armory, that last player simply picks up their piece and places it on the final Armory space and exchanges Gadgets and possibly Villains.

In the second Escape, a new route of four map boards is created.  Each player again chooses a team of two of their unchosen villains and the second race is played just as the first.  The starting player for the second Escape is whoever finished first in the First Escape.  The winner of the game is the player who is able to escape the second maze first!

My thoughts on the game

As I was playing this game, it did remind me a lot of Magical Athlete – a game which was recently re-done as well.  While familiar, there are definitely some things which help this feel different.  First off, it’s a strict race.  The winner is not the person with the most points but rather the player that finishes the final race first.  

This climactic end condition gives players a few different ways to approach the game.  Do you try to save your best two characters to go in the final race?  Do you try to mix them up to compete in the first race?  The better you do in the first race, the better your selection of Gadget cards to start the second race – so there is definitely some motivation to do well in the first heat.

You have a selection of five villains to choose from at the start of the game, and it’s an intriguing decision to figure out how to pair them together.  It does take a bit of getting used to; that you have to consider the special actions of BOTH of your villains at the same time.

Components are adequate with punchboard standees for the villains.  The artwork is appropriately comic-book-ish though some of the villains feel unfamiliar to me.  The boards are a bit bland/generic, but really, they just need to provide 12 spaces to traverse, so it’s fine.  My one real complaint is that I wish the game had better bases for the villain pairs, specifically wanting them to be easily identifiable from each other.  All the bases are plain black, and it’s easy to confuse the movers.  If the bases were different colors or shapes, this would not be as much of an issue.

For me, the game works just fine, and like Magical Athlete, it definitely has its “A-HA” moments when a great combo works out or a surprise Gadget card turns the game on its head.  Yet, the game isn’t engaging throughout the whole game.  Many turns are simply, roll the die, move the designated number of spaces, say “done”.  The Gadget cards do seem to add in nice powers, but they are one-time-use only.  That being said, there are 40 Villains in the game, and as each of them comes with a different unique ability – you should have a nice challenge each game trying to pair them up as best you can.

Two races is just enough for me.  In fact, I’d be just as happy to have the second race also be only three boards long instead of four, but I get that you might want the 33% longer race as it is the decisive heat.  DC Breakout: Arkham Asylum gives you an elevated roll and move race with lots of special actions thrown in that you can take advantage of.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it.
• Neutral. Dale Y
• Not for me…