Dice Tower reshoots deleted Darwin’s Journey review after rules error, Tom Vasel gives rare 9 rating to expansion

Board game reviews giant The Dice Tower has upped its scores for Kickstarter success Darwin’s Journey in a reshot video, two weeks after deleting its original review of the game due to a “pretty big rules mistake”.

Dice Tower founder and host Tom Vasel rated the game a 7 out of 10 in the first review, which was quickly deleted alongside an apology from Vasel to publisher ThunderGryph Games and designers Simone Luciani and Nestore Mangone.

The new review saw Vasel hand Darwin’s Journey an 8, which he upped to a 9 with the inclusion of the game’s Fireland expansion in a separate review video.

Vasel said, “I really like the action that I didn’t get right the first time, when you get to put out a lens, and then immediately do, sometimes a really amazing action – it feels great.”

He said of the Firelands expansion, “I don’t think it makes it a little better, it makes it a lot better.”

“…I want to be clear, the difference between 8 and 9 is exponentially pretty… I give out very few 9s, but it made the game that much better.

“I liked everything about it. I liked the options, I liked doing stuff no one else does, and this expansion allows even more of that.”

Vasel’s co-host Wendy Yi originally rated the game a 5, but upped it to 7.5 for the reshot review, while Chris Yi increased his score from 7.5 to 8.5. All three rated the Firelands expansion as a 9.

The Dice Tower is one of the biggest board game reviewers in the industry, with more than 323,000 subscribers.

The site has largely attracted positive commentary from across the internet for its quick action in removing and reshooting the review

Darwin’s Journey currently has an 8.2 rating on BoardGameGeek. The game raised more than €1m on Kickstarter at the start of 2021 from over 16,700 backers.