Too Many Bones

Too Many Bones doesn’t look like anything else on your shelf, and it doesn’t play like anything else either. Designed by Josh J. Carlson and Adam Carlson and published by Chip Theory Games in 2017, the game replaces cardboard tokens and wooden cubes with premium poker chips, neoprene mats, and over a hundred custom dice per character. Players take on the roles of Gearlocs, small fantasy creatures facing off against a tyrant at the end of a multi-day adventure, building their abilities one die at a time across encounters that test both strategy and adaptability.

Community reception has been enthusiastic and sustained, with the game developing a dedicated following that borders on cult status. The praise centers on two things: the character progression system and the sheer variety packed into the box. Criticism exists too, mostly around accessibility and cost, but the people who connect with Too Many Bones tend to connect hard.

Gearlocs, Dice, and the Joy of Building a Character

Character building is where Too Many Bones earns its reputation. Each Gearloc starts with a basic set of dice and a skill tree represented on their character mat. After each encounter, players earn training points that let them unlock new skill dice, adding them to their growing pool of abilities. The progression isn’t linear. Each Gearloc has branching paths that reward different build strategies, and two players running the same character across separate campaigns can end up with wildly different toolkits.

Four base Gearlocs ship in the box, and they play nothing alike. Patches is a healer who keeps the party alive while applying poison to wear down enemies. Boomer builds bombs for devastating area damage that can clear the board in a single turn. Picket anchors the front line as a tank with shield-based abilities. Tantrum deals massive melee damage, growing stronger with each enemy defeated. These aren’t cosmetic differences. Each character demands a fundamentally different approach to encounters, and learning a new Gearloc feels like learning a new game. This asymmetry is the primary engine of replayability, and it works. Players report replaying with the same character multiple times just to explore different skill paths.

Bones, the game’s namesake mechanic, function as a clever fail-forward system. When dice miss during combat, bones accumulate on your backup plan, and once enough bones build up, you can trigger powerful abilities that can shift the momentum of a fight. It captures the feeling of a charge meter in a video game, turning bad luck into stored potential rather than pure frustration. Combined with the tactical decisions on the 4x4 battle mat, where positioning and targeting matter more than raw dice power, combat stays engaging even when rolls don’t go your way.

Component quality deserves mention because it directly affects how the game feels at the table. The poker chips have real weight. The dice are custom printed with unique icons for every skill. The neoprene mats lay flat and stay put. This isn’t a game where components merely function. They elevate the experience. For a game built entirely around rolling and placing dice, that tactile quality matters more than it would in a lighter design.

The Premium Price of Entry

Cost is the elephant in the room, and the community is honest about it. The base game carries a significant price tag, and character expansions add up quickly for players who want the full roster. The quality of materials justifies the expense for most buyers, but it’s still a barrier. This isn’t a game you pick up on impulse to see if your group enjoys dice builders. It’s an investment, and it asks you to commit before you know whether the game clicks for you.

Learning curve is steeper than it first appears. The basic round flow is simple enough: encounter a card, make choices, fight on the battle mat, earn rewards. But each Gearloc introduces unique rules, each enemy has its own behavior patterns, and the interaction between different skill dice creates layers of complexity that take several sessions to fully grasp. Players who jump in without preparation often feel overwhelmed, and the game doesn’t do much to ease them through those first few sessions. Community consensus strongly suggests studying the rules and watching tutorials before the first play.

Art style is a genuine point of division. The Gearloc designs lean into a cartoonish, exaggerated look that some players find charming and others find off-putting. This is more than a cosmetic complaint for some people. The visual identity of a game affects willingness to bring it to the table, and a few potential buyers have reported passing on the game specifically because the character art didn’t appeal to them. Those who push past the initial reaction typically find that the art bothers them less once they’re absorbed in gameplay.

At higher player counts, pacing suffers. The game runs best with one or two players, where downtime between turns stays minimal and the tactical puzzle feels tight. With three or four, turns take longer, the battle mat gets crowded, and the wait between meaningful decisions can stretch. Solo play, on the other hand, is excellent. The game includes dedicated solo encounter cards, and the character-building arc feels complete and satisfying with a single Gearloc.

A Dice Game That Respects Your Decisions

What sets Too Many Bones apart from other dice-heavy games is how much your decisions matter despite the randomness. Building your character is a strategic exercise with lasting consequences. Choosing which skills to unlock, which encounters to pursue, and how to manage resources across the adventure creates a throughline of player agency that most dice games lack entirely. The dice introduce variance, but the framework around them rewards planning and adaptation.

Backup plan is the best illustration of this philosophy. Instead of treating bad rolls as pure punishment, the game converts them into a resource. That design choice ripples through every encounter, changing how players approach risk and making even unlucky sessions feel productive.

Is Too Many Bones Worth Your Investment?

Solo gamers and dedicated two-player groups will get the most out of this game. If you enjoy RPG-style character progression, tactical combat, and the satisfaction of building something powerful from scratch, Too Many Bones delivers that loop better than almost anything else in the hobby. The replayability is enormous, with different characters, build paths, and encounter combinations ensuring that dozens of sessions can pass before things start to feel familiar.

Skip it if you’re price-sensitive and uncertain about the genre, or if your primary gaming context is groups of three or four. The investment only makes sense if you’re confident the game will see regular table time. Players who dislike dice-heavy randomness or prefer elegant, rules-light designs should also look elsewhere.

The Verdict on Too Many Bones

Too Many Bones is a premium dice-builder RPG that delivers some of the most satisfying character progression in tabletop gaming. Each Gearloc plays radically differently, the component quality justifies the price tag, and the replayability runs deep enough to sustain hundreds of hours. A steep learning curve and divisive art style will push some players away before the game has a chance to win them over. But for anyone willing to invest the time and money, this is one of the most rewarding cooperative experiences on the market.