Lantern

The silence is deafening.
For months, the Kingdom has been covered in a veil of unease, for the lookouts of the Last Fortress have gone silent. No word, no signal, not even a whisper.
The last reports spoke of strange sightings from the East, a region long abandoned. But now, the horizon is ablaze. Flames lit up the night sky, casting ominous shadows that danced over the charred remains of the fortress walls.
The time has come to abandon the safety of your walls and venture into the dark, twisted forest that stands between you and the truth. The journey ahead will test your courage, your wit, and your will to survive. Do you have what it takes?
*goosebumps*
Lantern is a spectacular roll-and-write game designed by D. Di Maggio and published by Casual Game Revolution. For those who tried Escape of the Dead, you will love Lantern! There are similarities between the two, Lantern being a more advanced game with a legendary story behind it. For those who are new to their journey of print-and-play games, we highly recommend playing this game. If you need more reasons to play this game, then you will be delighted to know that Lantern won the 2019 R&W Game Design Contest as the best overall game, best solitaire game, best thematic game, best-written rules, best original artwork, and best innovative mechanic category. Amazing isn’t it?
Now that we have your full attention, let’s get to know all that you need to jump right into the adventures of Lantern.

All you need to play Lantern
The entire experience of this roll-and-write game is encompassed in one A4 page! It has a black-and-white version and a colored version, and it’s up to your preference which one you want to give a try. If you are a minimalist soul, then you can even draw it out and add a bit of your personal touch to it.
Do not forget the aspect of roll-and-write in this game; meaning, you will need to draw or mark the printed sheet while playing it. This is why we opted to color-print and laminate the sheet so that we can play on it an infinite number of times, with a non-permanent marker or sign pen. The game is originally in black-and-white, but thanks to Chris de Villiers we got a breath-taking colored version!
You can print and laminate the page in local printing stores, or you can also check out a printer and laminator that we recommend for PnP games that are bang for the buck.
With the page sorted out, we need 6 D6 dice in this game. If you are already immersed in the realm of PnP games, chances are you’ve already got six dice to roll at a moment’s notice. But if you’re missing this essential gaming tool, now’s the time to stock up. These dice are not just for this game, they will be your trusted companions in countless PnP adventures to come. With the dice covered, you may want to have a dice tray for this game. With 6 dice to be used in this game, which will be required to be rotated and allocated to sectors, it is best to contain them in a flat and enclosed structure that the Dice tray provides. If you are on the fence about dice trays, just make sure that you are playing the game on a flat surface.Â
With the game components at your disposal, we move on to a handy gameplay video for the tutorial. Being an award-winning game, we came across many gameplay videos for Lantern, but one that we loved best is ‘Martin Is Probably Playing This Wrong: Lantern Edition’ by Martin Gonzalvez. The video is not only informative, hilarious, and highly entertaining, but we also found it extremely relatable; we all make mistakes when we try out a new game, and Martin is really open about it. You can even browse through the comments of this video to see the errors commonly made while playing Lantern, and how to fix them. The video is provided at the end of the article.

What we liked about Lantern
Fun, Fast, Free!
Oh, the holy trinity for Print-and-play games! It took us less than 10 minutes to understand the rules of the game, and 20 minutes to play the game for the first time after which the game time dropped to 10 minutes, and we ended up playing the game 7 times at a stretch. That tells you something! Like always, our team gathered around the one playing it, gave our fair share of good and bad advice, and passed the game to the next person to repeat it all over again. And we had a blast! Lantern has made its way to our regular PnP showdown. The game being free is the icing on the cake!
Amazing dice mechanisms
Earlier we mentioned how Lantern is more advanced than Escape of the Dead, and it is mostly owing to the dice mechanisms that the game unravels. Other than the expected ‘allocation of dice’ move that PnP games commonly explore, there are options for flipping dice to their opposite face, adding or subtracting dice numbers, and re-rolling an individual or group of dice. Such variations elevate the game experience since it provides the players with multiple ways of addressing every step of the game.
Fun post-game aftermath
This may not be a game changer, but it’s admirable to see the game designer take it one step further by providing a mechanism of counting points based on the Ability or Constitution used in the game. The less they are used, the more points you will get! So not only can you track your highest scores on every victory, you can also compare it with your friends to see who is the ultimate master; which can be particularly handy in game tournaments, or game nights!

We smell Customization all over it!
The more we play this game, the more we realize how much it can be customized to elevate the overall game experience. For a start, the black and white version of the print for the game is available, so you can print and color the gorgeous illustration with some high-quality coloring pens. Once colored, you can laminate the print to prepare it for gameplay. Since a dice tray can be an integral part of this game, why not attach this game to a board that has indentations to hold the dice? You can also 3-D print the creatures that you will encounter on each round of the game with a handy mini-printer, adding further spatial depth to this game. The sky’s the limit! We recommend such customizations only if you are a big fan of the game, and willing to dedicate a portion of your shelf to storing it.
And here’s an interesting thing we tried while playing the game:
We had a few rounds of Lantern where we used a mini-sand clock to ensure the player gets only a minute to tackle each enemy. If the player crossed the one-minute mark, then there were penalties. This customized addition to the game made Lantern even more intense, so we recommend trying it out at least for once.

Where to get it from
Interested to start your adventure? The award-winning game is available at Board Game Geek and for free. So, zero cost of purchase and minimal cost of printing is what it takes to dive into an intense and catchy game experience of Lantern, that we can guarantee you will play over and over again! A big shout out to the game designer D. Di Maggio, and publisher Casual Game Revolution for creating this game, and we cannot wait to try out more of your creations!
Overview | Lantern
Publisher: Casual Game Revolution
Number of players: 1
Difficulty level: Easy
Rounds of gameplay needed to learn: 1 round
Game duration: 10 to 15 minutes
Price: FreeÂ
Download from: Boardgamegeek.com
Theme: Fight with enemies to claim Fortress
Number of pages and color: 1 (black and white or color print)
Assembling difficulty level: Easy
Lamination: Recommended for longevity
Additional elements required: 6 dice and a Dice tray
Time to learn: Within 30 minutes
Travel-friendly: 9/10
Shelving friendly: 9/10
Rating from PnP Time: 8.5/10

Tasliman is a board game developer based in Bangladesh, with the dream of exploring the world of games and introducing it to anyone new to it. He is the founder of Kraftz, a brand that develops board games commercially, as well as with reputed entities like BRAC and The Gates Foundation.