The Board Game Verson of Inferno

Links: http://www.twilightcreationsinc.com/en/boardgames/dantesinferno.html 
http://www.funagain.com/control/product?product_id=014283 
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6201/dantes-inferno 

Before I registered for this Dante class, I knew almost nothing about Dante and his Divine Comedy.  I only knew that is about Hell and that there are some very gruesome punishments for the sinners.  However, now that I have been studying The Divine Comedy for the last two months, I realize that Dante has had a lasting impact on just about every type of media, art, and even games.   I have always enjoyed playing board games.  So, I decided to see what I could find by googling Dante and games.  The first game that popped up was the Inferno video game, but I was not interested in a video game.  I wanted to see if there is some sort of board game based off of The Divine Comedy.  Sure enough, I discovered a relatively recent (2003) board game inspired by the Inferno.

The goal of the game is to successfully travel through each of the nine circles of Hell.  As the players travel through each of the circles, he earns resources, which actually are sinners, and fights demons.  If a player is not able to beat a demon, the player is forced to move to a lower circle and work his way back up to the higher circles.  In order to enter the next circle, a player must be on the appropriate tile of the board and buy his entry using his resources.  Once a player has arrived at the ninth circle of Hell, he has to fight Lucifer by rolling the die.  If the player rolls less than a 10, he has to return to the 8^th circle and try again when he gets back into the 9^th circle.  The playing pieces are supposed to be Dante and there are pieces designed as demons.  

I have never played this game, but it sounds interesting and fun.  However, I discovered that this board game does not deal with the political and religious themes that Dante addresses in Inferno.  The players of the game are not seeking truth about God and about how to get out of a crisis.  Rather, the players want work their way the 9^th circle and beat Lucifer.  Instead of using the journey idea of Inferno, the creators of the board game focused on Dante’s layout of Hell.  The creators included the nine circles of Hell and focuses on the sins of lust, violence, gluttony, and hypocrisy.  In the instruction manual, the creators of the game actually acknowledge that they focus on Dante’s structure rather than his message.

I looked at some of the reviews for this game.  The average rating for the game is a 5 out of 10.  The design of the game and the colors used are praised, but the game itself takes a long time.