Every time I mention I’m playing Kevin Wilson’s Kinfire, somebody asks if it’s really as big and intimidating as they’ve heard. This sparks a clarification: the Kinfire in question is Kinfire Delve, which is considerably smaller than Kinfire Chronicles, the latter of which is so sprawling and so expensive that it would probably be compromising for me to even glance at the thing.

No, Kinfire Delve — specifically Vainglory’s Grotto, the first of three proposed releases in the Delve line — is neither big nor intimidating. To the contrary, it’s compact and easy. Both solitaire and with two players, it’s as smooth as they come. Maybe too smooth. But only by a scooch.

Choosing which challenge to tackle next.

Right from its first moments, Kinfire Delve feels good on the fingertips. That’s half because Kevin Wilson has been at his craft for so long that he could probably design a compelling board game character in his sleep. But the other half happens to be weightier. Solid characters are nothing without a good challenge. Okay, how about four of them? Because the central premise of Delve is a wheel of four challenges arrayed around the final boss.

That boss is Vainglory, an immortal elf who plays with her food and enjoys a good symphony, but let’s not get bogged down in fantasy mumbo-jumbo. She’s a baddie, you’re here to kill her, there we have it. But before you can drive a stake through her heart, you need to reach the bottom of her well, the game’s neato word for a deck of assorted obstacles. Hence the challenges that surround her.

Those two halves come together with a satisfying snick. The heroes included in Vainglory’s Grotto are natural complements of one another. There’s Khor, a big robo-boy who boasts a solid defense, and Asha, a lady with impressively long fingernails for scratching hard-to-reach places or finishing off injured monsters. In practice, Khor is great at starting a fight, adding a few pips of progress while blocking any resultant damage, while Asha leaps in to murder any problem before it gets back up again.

Which is some useful synergy given how the challenges work. I mentioned that there are four at any given time. Each can be filed into a few different archetypes — combat, trap, obstacle, puzzle, that sort of thing — as well as one of three color-coded suits. The same goes for each hero’s cards. There’s an element of matching to consider. Maybe you’re holding a card that’s great at disarming spring-loaded treasure chests, but the color is off. Or there are a bunch of monsters but you aren’t fully equipped for combat at the moment. You’re free to pick which challenge to tackle next, even bouncing between options to trickle out progress over the course of multiple encounters. But one must be careful. While succeeding at a challenge peels cards from the top of the well, making it easier to reach Vainglory, a failure injures or fatigues your heroes. You can boost your number with further discards, overcoming sticky encounters for a price. But failures come fast and often, forcing you to decide when to soak up a hit or take a chance on the dice.

Perhaps Kinfire Delve’s cleverest trick is that you don’t automatically refill your hand. Instead, your selection slowly wanes until you’re forced to rest. This draws a fresh hand but also pulls a card from Vainglory’s exhaustion deck. These are, to use a technical term, bad. One of them refills the challenges with fewer cards, constraining your options. There are a few that function as a timer, threatening to kill your heroes if they draw too many duplicates. Another is a symphony, an off-key rendition of the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth, which loses you the game after four more failures. Gulp. Every discarded card is one more spent second on an explosive countdown.

Hero… that could work for me.

Of course, there are also tools that can be turned to your advantage. The coolest is your lantern. Yeah, your lantern. Deal with it. These begin the game face-down beside each hero and only flip up in rare instances. Even then, they can only be used once before mandating another recharge. But they’re great for nuking the entire dungeon, whether discarding challenges outright or dumping extra progress tokens on everything.

But your regular decks aren’t slouches in their own right. Both characters bring some truly impressive feats to the table. It seems like Khor’s defensive stances would wear him down, but playing his cards in the right sequence will see him recharging his hand without getting exhausted. Asha requires extra finesse, keeping her daggers in-hand rather than tossing them into the discard and deploying tactical strikes on enemies.

Put together, the whole thing is buttery smooth. The choices feel great. The characters feel great. Even the penalties feel great in their own way, forcing little quirks or adaptations. On more than one occasion, I’ve struggled to pick between firing up my lantern or tossing out one of Vainglory’s exhaustion cards. Or, more often, between tackling one challenge or another. Nicely, some challenges might be desirable to keep around. There’s the maze, a card that gets harder as more mazes are added. But completing one maze also completes every other maze in play. What was once a relatively straightforward challenge is now a chance to clear the table and absolutely rip through the well. Far from being an obvious choice, though, this is a gamble. You might not ever draw another maze. Or you might be overwhelmed by the orchestra, a baddie that deals damage whenever a blue challenge card is drawn. Or you might get sick of waiting around for more mazes. There are all sorts of perils afoot.

“Perils.” In the moment, Kinfire Delve certainly chucks the right hurdles into your path. The monsters are creepy. The challenges are tough to pick between. Vainlory’s a real punk, especially if you reach her on your last legs. Every so often, something comes along that really threatens to knock your socks off. Or your prosthetic fingernails.

Getting out of tight spots, however, seems to be your lantern-swingers’ specialty. Such a specialty that the game doesn’t offer much of a challenge. I’m sure it’s possible to lose; between the luck of the draw — three times over! — and the tumble of the dice, surely some delves will come up short. But I haven’t seen it happen. When played with two, the heroes are dang effective, riffing on one another’s abilities so well that they could pick up the enemy’s fallen musical instruments and form a beloved garage band. Solitaire mode is harder, forcing you to play and boost from only the one hand, but I have yet to witness Vainglory not get bodied by a solo hero. The rules come with instructions for a stiffer challenge, but it’s nothing more than starting with a couple of wounds. Boo. Maybe future sets will be sterner. For now, this feels like a starter quest.

Dun dun dun-dun dun dun dun-dun.

But hey, it’s a starter quest that feels absolutely pitch-perfect and doesn’t pit us against rats or cockroaches. And I’m eager to see what else Wilson does with the system. Future sets will come with two additional characters apiece, not to mention additional baddies, wells, exhaustion decks, and all the rest. I can’t wait to mix and match. Partially because I want to see Khor and Asha face new enemies, but also because it will be interesting to see how they fare when paired with heroes they aren’t so perfectly suited for.

All in all, a good start, with a wonderful challenge system and cool heroes. Is there room for Delve to stretch its legs? I hope so. If it grows deeper as its roster expands, Wilson will have something special on his hands.

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A complimentary copy was provided.