The box is cute, the apocalypse is cuter, and somewhere between your second “Catastrophe” and your friend’s smug grin, you start wondering if this card game is secretly a personality test. This is a review of Doomlings.
Doomlings feels like a party where every guest brought a different playlist and somehow the mashup works. One turn you’re building a slick little engine, the next a purple gremlin of a Trait knocks your plan off the table and giggles while you fish it out of the void. It’s adorable end-times energy, all sugar-rush art and sardonic flavor text, but underneath the candy coating there’s a specific kind of card-game DNA: quick hands, cheeky tempo swings, and “take that” jabs that land just hard enough to get a laugh instead of a grudge. You won’t be calculating marginal efficiencies; you’ll be telling stories like, “Remember when the second Catastrophe hit and my Gene Pool shrank and I still top-decked the perfect Dominant Trait?” Doomlings is a memory machine for casual tables.
Mechanically, it’s a hand-management skeleton draped in a lot of one-of-a-kind fabric. You draw from a shared pile, play Traits for points, and stitch together little combos for bonuses. The Ages keep the table moving, each one laying down a temporary law of the land while you adapt. Somewhere inside those Ages, Catastrophes are waiting, and when the third one drops the lights go out and you flip to endgame scoring. The twist—what keeps Doomlings from feeling like a dozen other lightweight fillers—is the Gene Pool. That dial is your personal hand size, and it’s not shy about changing. Expand it and you’re fishing from a bigger pond; shrink it and you’re basically speed-running survival mode. It’s a clever, tactile way to express tempo and power without drowning new players in icon soup.
The art and production values do a ton of heavy lifting. The cards look like they were illustrated by a Saturday morning cartoonist who read a little too much evolutionary biology, and that contrast sells the theme. The teaching time is legitimately short; after five minutes of table talk and one sample turn, most groups are already riffing. Even at two players it hums, which is a small miracle for this genre, and with four to six it becomes the popcorn flick you want out of a filler—fast cuts, big swings, applause breaks.
Let’s talk table reality. Doomlings is swingy by design. You can get walloped by a Catastrophe, lose your plan, and still win because your new hand sings; you can also set up a perfect little engine and watch somebody yoink the lynchpin. If your group lives for “gotcha” moments, that chaos is the feature. If your group sulks when their tableau gets nudged, that chaos is the bug. The scoring happens in a final reveal that can feel like a twist ending—fun for spectacle, frustrating if you need to track the race as you go. If that bothers you, print a quick score aid or keep a running tally on the side; the game won’t mind, and your AP-prone friends will thank you.
Replay-wise, the “no duplicates” card pool keeps the texture fresh. But freshness here doesn’t mean deeper; it means different. You’re exploring breadth more than depth—same skeleton, new costumes. Expansions like hidden objectives and extra Trait sets add spice and a little long-term planning, and they can lengthen the arc if your group wants more chew. There is also a brand new extension called Castle Glass, you should definitely check out! You can also tune the tempo with house rules—add an extra Age before each Catastrophe or slip in a fourth Catastrophe if your crew wants a longer runway. Just remember that more time doesn’t magically make a lightweight system heavy; it makes it roomier.
Now: The crucial bit.
Flip side: when should you not? If your game night is a temple to long arcs and precision—think crunchy euros, calculated engines, perfect-information puzzles—Doomlings will feel like a commercial break that airs one too many times. The randomness isn’t an occasional spice; it’s the meal. “Take that” is not a seasoning sprinkled at the end; it’s baked into the batter. If your group hates surprise point swings or needs perfect visibility on who’s ahead, the final tally reveal will land like a jump scare you saw coming and still didn’t want. If you’re hoping to fill a whole evening with one title, you’ll either end up playing multiple rounds and chasing the same sugar high or switching to something meatier anyway.
A word on pace. Opinions diverge because Doomlings is a chameleon. With two it can feel snappy, almost a sprint through Catastrophes. With larger tables, it stretches, sometimes past the sweet spot if people hem and haw over which clever Trait to slap down. That variability is part of the charm, but it also means you should read your room. If people are vibing with the banter, you’re golden. If people are hungry for arc and escalation, this won’t feed them for long.
So who is this for, in clean terms? It’s for the friend group that quotes the card text out loud and heckles with love. It’s for the parent who wants something teachable but not babyish. It’s for the board gamer who respects a well-made filler and knows not every night needs a rules summit. It’s for the collector who smiles at unique cards and a bright table presence. It is not for the min-maxer who needs to feel in control every turn or the strategist who equates randomness with heresy. And that’s okay. Free markets of fun demand variety; not every box has to do everything.
Now to the promised strategy tips: Protect your Gene Pool like it’s hit points—bigger hands equal better choices. Hunt for synergies in color families, but don’t fall in love with any one line; the third Catastrophe is the only promise. Use table talk to steer “take that” away from your lane, because politics is half the game in any light tableau brawler. If your table hates endgame math, designate a scorer or keep a cheat sheet nonchalantly nearby. And if you’re itching for more structure, toss in the hidden objectives; they add just enough direction without turning the game into homework.
Final word, no sugar-coating, straight to the point. Doomlings is good for non-gamer friends or as an icebreaker. If you are a board game enthusiast, however, you won’t be able to fill an entire evening with this game.
