I first played a Kinfire Delve game in 2025. In 2026, I got to demo it for two straight days at UK Games Expo. I thought that would be the point where I never wanted to see it again.
That didn't happen.
I first played a Kinfire Delve game in 2025. In 2026, I got to demo it for two straight days at UK Games Expo. I thought that would be the point where I never wanted to see it again.
That didn't happen.
Somewhere between explaining the rules for the tenth time and running yet another dungeon, I started noticing more in it. Small decisions I’d rushed past before. Little interactions between cards. Moments where the game gives me the option to make a worse decision now so things don’t fall apart later. By the end of the expo, I’d already placed an order for Callous’ Lab.
For the uninitiated, Kinfire Delve is a roguelike dungeon crawler from Incredible Dream. Each box gives you two characters, a deck of dungeon challenges (the Well Deck), and a final boss, the Well Master. You work your way through the Well Deck before the final fight against the box’s titular Well Master. If you’ve played One Deck Dungeon, you’ll pick it up quickly.
So what makes it different?
Two things: how it feels on the table, and how good it looks.
The artwork is genuinely great. It’s the kind of game that makes people stop at a convention table and ask what it is - quite literally! The foil-backed cards help, but it’s more than that. Everything is clear. You can actually read what you need to know without squinting, which sounds basic, but isn’t always a given - and I’m glad to see accessibility is being considered more and more. Kinfire Delves is a game that can sit on your coffee table and look decorative, while also being easy to read without needing to lean in closely.
Under these beautiful aesthetics is a tight resource puzzle; one that is clearly designed with its theme in mind. In Kinfire Delve, you play cards and roll dice to overcome challenges as you delve down the Well Deck, but your hand size is always limited. You can refill it with abilities or by discarding your hand, drawing back up to your starting hand size, known as “exhausting”. However, if you exhaust your hand, you have to put an exhaustion card into play. These exhaustion cards stick around introduce new persistent lose conditions. These exhaustion cards up the ante and rewards smart hand management, while allowing players to mitigate bad draws from costing them the game.
On top of this, all players share a health pool of 10 - represented by a d10. When you hit zero, you all lose, and the game ends.
This leads to most turns ending up being some version of the same question. Do I play cards conservatively at a cost now, or do you play big to minimise failures now, but risk introducing deadly lose conditions via exhaustion cards? Over my countless plays, there were plenty of moments where I’d sit there longer than I probably should, just trying to work out which mistake I was more willing to make: do I sacrifice some health now or do I play cards and draw a new Exhaustion card next turn?
While the artwork and gameplay are brilliant, the replayability is what surprised me about Kinfire Delve. After 20+ hours in a couple of weeks, I still wanted to keep playing it, and this is just with Vainglory’s Grotto.
Out of the box, the game comes with plenty of options in how to play: solo, co-op, shorter runs, harder modes, and even a list of achievements to chase. While this may not sound like enough replayability for 20+ hours, the fact that you only get to see about ⅓ to ½ of the Well Deck in a playthrough is where the roguelike aspects come in. I’m still yet to see certain cards get drawn from the deck, and there are still new combinations of challenges being presented to me that make the game still feel unpredictable and fresh.
The Well Master adds another layer on top. Each boss has three variants that change how the final fight plays out, whether that’s more difficulty, extra lives, or effects that undo progress you’ve already made. Again, this adds a nice level of replayability and unpredictability to the overall game. Especially as two of the Vainglory variants can become powered up from decisions you made before this phase.
My only real gripe here is that the challenge cards during the boss phase don’t change. Everything else in the system is so flexible that this stands out a bit. It feels like the one area where it could have gone a bit further.
However, I cannot complain too much as the game is compatible with the other Kinfire Delve games: Scorn’s Stockade and Callous’ Lab. By introducing another box, you can increase player count to 4 players and try out new character combinations or take the Vainglory’s Grotto duo to a different Well.
By mixing Vainglory’s Grotto with Scorn’s Stockade at UKGE, I ended up finding some really nice synergy between Asha Brillbrook and Naz of the Windstrikes, which allowed us to quickly chain-complete multiple challenges in a single turn.
By adding Callous’ Lab to my Vainglory’s Grotto set, I have no doubts that I can get at least 30 more hours of gameplay out of Kinfire Delve, and still not be tired of it.
After two days of demoing it at UK Games Expo, I thought I’d be done with it for a while. Instead I came home and bought another box.
I don’t really need a better recommendation than that.
Scores
Artwork - 5/5
Component Quality - 4/5
Complexity - 3/5
Replayability - 4/5
Player Interaction - 4/5
80/100
Likes
- The artwork
- The variety in challenge cards
- The mix-and-match system allowing for up to 4-players
Dislikes
- Lack of variety in Well Master challenge cards
- The lack of official 5-6 player mode, despite there being six characters
Zatu Review Summary
