Image taken from https://boardgamegeek.com/image/8091469/the-sleeping-giant

Designer and Artist: Marco Salogni
Publisher: Web Published

The Sleeping Giant is a double-sided puzzle maze where you also have to fight monsters! You get to choose your own path and explore the giant robot and all it has to offer. To play, all you need is the sheet, three six-sided dice, and a pencil.

Before you enter the maze, you get to start with two life points and two skill points. Once you’ve entered, the only way you can get more is by discovering them on your journey. Skill points help you alter dice rolls when fighting; if you run out of life points, you’re toast. As you travel through, you can also find some symbols that will also help when you fight. If you come across a monster with that symbol, you get to fight as normal, but if you don’t have that symbol, it counts as an extra life point for the enemy making it tougher to beat.

Although you can find these useful items scattered throughout, you’ll also encounter monsters. When you find a monster, you battle by rolling the dice (you only have a certain number of rolls) to deal damage. Before you roll, you decide what type of attack you are going to use. A fist requires a total of six or higher and does one damage, a kick requires a total of eight or higher and does two damage, and a hammer requires a total of eleven or higher and does four damage. Once you commit to an attack, though, even if you roll a higher number, you aren’t allowed to use any better attack. Similarly, if you commit to a higher-level attack, if the dice total is not large enough, you can’t just use whatever attack fits your outcome. Honestly, this is one of the most challenging parts. It’s a unique and interesting mechanic that can be very frustrating (trust me), but it’s also quite clever.

If you fail to defeat a monster, you take damage as expected. Thankfully, if you fail and you choose to fight again, you don’t lose all your progress, so that makes defeating them the second time easier. But note, if you leave and come back again later, their health resets.

The other plot twist in this: if you double back across any path you’ve taken, you lose a time point. Only five time points are available, so you have to be very strategic where you travel. Every time I do this (I have mine laminated so I can use it multiple times), I constantly find myself sitting there staring at the different gates and ladders and paths trying to determine how to get to where I need to go. It’s a great spatial puzzle!

In order to win, you have to have time and life left, defeat all the smaller monsters, and then successfully beat the AI in the head of the giant.

My only small issue is that sometimes I don’t know which little passageways I can use, and which are there to separate rooms. Maybe they’re all allowed to be used, but I’m genuinely not sure.
Sometimes I just follow an alley and hope it’s legitimate. 🤷‍♀️

Overall, I find the adventure of the sleeping giant quite fun. It can be challenging and frustrating but also rewarding and enjoyable.