In a matter of only one week and four great games, Perdition's Mouth: Abyssal Rift has displaced Mage Knight as my favorite solitaire adventure game and ranks higher than every fantasy themed game I've played to date, excepting only the necrotic Cave Evil.
Several things distinguish Perdition's Mouth Abyssal Rift from other fantasy board games that I've played. First, the art is terrific and unique: This game is not soft and upbeat heroic fantasy, but horror fantasy, and the grim dungeons and horrid creatures all enrich the theme. Wounds that your characters sustain are card specified things like pulped hands and nausea, rather than simply "hit points". Creatures are arachnid and crustacean hybrids with demonic attributes and the cultists that serve the underworld blow poisoned darts or flee to ring the alarm, depending upon their character. The feel is great, dark, and oppressive: This game is hard.
The mechanic of single or multiple action selection on a wheel is a cool variation on action cards, and as in a game like Gunslinger, the players are sometimes unable to do the most desirable action at a critical point. Good planning helps, but if the enemy is given the opportunity to make three or four moves in a single turn, your plans may soon be useless. Perdition's Mouth has the puzzle component that makes Mage Knight such a brain burner, but there is more action on the board in PM, which keeps the theme more to the fore, especially since combat is far better detailed (the abstracted combat is my least favorite thing about Mage Knight). At times, Perdition's Mouth reminds me of narrative wargames like Ambush! or (the good parts of) Raid on St. Nazaire. But the treasures, miniatures, personalities of the creatures, and special abilities all make it strong fantasy.
My criticisms are small. The rulebook is very confusing up top, but gets better by page 5, though still could be clearer, especially with more illustrations of gameplay and the various combinations that exist. Also, at times I'm not sure how much intelligence to give the enemy. When they have two equidistant paths to their target (the weakest hero), should I give them the intelligence not to get in each other's way or an even a higher level intelligence in terms of anticipating my plans in subsequent turns? The answer is probably "don't overthink this too much, just move them in order", but almost always I err on making my enemies too smart rather than too simple. So yeah...I spend a little more time gaming the enemy than I'd like, but that's a pretty minor quibble.
Bottom Line:
I highly recommend this game to people who like fantasy games or wargames or both, especially gamers who relish puzzling dilemmas during the fray. The combat is cool, the art is terrific, the components (boards and miniatures) are at the highest level (this is the heaviest/thickest board I've ever felt), and peril exists from the very first turn until you get out of that deadly dungeon. This isn't rehashed orcs, dragons, and knights fantasy, but a unique, moody, and harrowing dungeon crawl that is immersive, challenging, tense, and fun.