Twice a month, Georgia and Miriam give themselves one hour to devise an original game concept based on a prompt. Below is an overview of our co-op adventure deckbuilder, Labyrinthians.
THE ELEVATOR PITCH
Labyrinthians is a 1-2 player co-op adventure deckbuilder where players assemble a team of monster characters who must travel to the centre of their beloved labyrinth and defeat the insidious evil which is growing there. Players use their cards to move and to fight increasingly challenging opponents. If they win a battle, the adversary joins their team in the form of new cards and abilities.
THE LOOK
The game is illustrated in a cute, chunky Claymation-esque style, with characterful monsters and creatures reminiscent of The Trapdoor. The modular board shows a map of labyrinth passages dotted with chambers and obstacles.
Components include:
- Modular board pieces making up 4 concentric rings of the labyrinth, plus the central chamber
- 20 unique Monster micro-decks, one for each character: 5 cards each
- 20 Generic micro-decks of 4 difficulty levels: 5 cards each
- 20 simple meeples or tokens to represent the opponent characters
- 20 Junk cards
- 1 player piece (the Team Totem)
- The Rot deck
- 1 20-sided die for tracking opponents’ health
The board modules include the central chamber and numbered pieces (1-4) which make up the four outer rings. Ring 1 is outermost and made up of 6 pieces; Ring 4 is innermost and made up of 3. These modules show small sections of labyrinth passages which align when the board is pieced together to make unique combinations of through routes and dead ends. Each module also contains a “Chamber” or space where combat will take place. Modules can also contain Obstacles (e.g. a mountain or an ice storm) and Obstacles are more common in the higher-numbered modules.
The decks used by characters and monsters are made up of character-specific decks and generic decks. Each Action Card shows three Statistics along the top (Defense, Health, and Movement) and three rows with Action options. All Action cards have an Action row which is highlighted, indicating it as the default Action for an automated deck. Actions and Statistics are explained more below.
THE AIM
Players are monsters, inhabitants of a typical questing labyrinth where many supernatural creatures make their home. They face a great threat: the Rot, a hypnotising force which has taken hold in the labyrinth’s centre and is progressively turning all the local monsters against each other. In order to save their home, players must travel from the outer ring of the labyrinth to the centre, using their decks to fight fellow monsters and bring them round. When another monster is defeated players can choose to add their special Action cards to their decks, strengthening themselves for the onward journey where they will eventually fight the Rot in joint battle.
SET UP
Players build the Labyrinth board from the modular pieces. They separate out all Monster decks by character and Generic decks by difficulty.
Players then choose their starting monster characters and create their starting decks, shuffling the 5 Monster cards for their character with 5 Generic Action cards of the lowest level. They separate their monsters’ tokens from the other monsters, which they randomly assign to the 18 Chambers of the labyrinth. They place the Team Totem on the starting space at the outer edge of the labyrinth. Each player places their deck face-down as their draw pile and draws their starting hand of 5 cards.
TURNS
At all times players work together, but in a two-player game players have their own separate decks. The game is broken up into ‘Arcs’; an Arc is completed and a new one starts when the players move the Team Totem through a Gate from the edge of one module to the next. During an Arc, players may not re-shuffle their discard pile into their draw pile (except by using the Heal action). If both players run out of cards, they must re-start the Arc from the edge they began at. Each time a card is played and once it is fully resolved, the player draws a card to replace it.
Cards can be used for the following purposes.
Travel: In order to move through the labyrinth’s passages players must play and discard Action cards with Movement stats equal to the distance they want to travel. Travelling around Obstacles and Chambers is significantly more expensive in Movement than going through them.
Tackling Obstacles: When the Team Totem enters the space of an Obstacle, players must discard cards which meet the stat requirement shown: for example, a mountain might require a significant cost in Movement, an ice storm might cost Health, and a swarm of wasps might cost Defense.
Facing Opponents: When the Team Totem enters a Chamber where a Monster token is placed, players assemble a deck for that monster, combining its unique Monster deck with a Generic deck of the correct difficulty (1 for ring 1, 2 for ring 2 etc.). Each Chamber is illustrated with a Challenge number. The monster’s deck is shuffled and cards equal to the Chamber’s Challenge number are laid out one by one in a row left-to-right on the table.
Players then choose which player will face the deck. The chosen player “fights” the row of cards, taking alternate turns with the automated deck. The Health of the monster is determined by the total Health of all the cards in the row. The Health of the player is a set number. Any time a player chooses not to collect cards as the result of a combat victory, they may instead increase their character’s Health by the defeated opponent’s Challenge level.
On the fighting player’s turn, they play one card from their hand and resolve it completely. On the monster’s turn the leftmost card in its row is activated, if possible. The monster will always use the default (highlighted) action on its card if possible, otherwise it will attack. If hit by an undefended attack, the player’s character loses Health.
The three Action rows on an Action card will always contain one of the following options depending on the row:
Top row: Attack (reduce opponent’s Health or Shield) or Defend (turn card sideways to create temporary barrier equal to card’s Defense score).
Middle row: Boost (draw X cards and add them to your hand/row), Equip (shuffle X cards from your Discard pile into your draw pile), Heal (increase your Health by X), or Grapple (force opponent to discard a card).
Bottom row: Ability. These are unique depending on the character. Abilities can affect the opponent with unique status effects or one-off adjustments. See the Appendix for examples. In order to win the combat, the fighting player must reduce the opponent’s health to zero before their own health is depleted. If successful, the player may choose to add the opponent’s unique Monster cards to their deck. If they fail, they take a Junk card. Junk cards have no stats or action options, but have some effect which takes place when they are played.
SUMMARY
Players continue attempting Arcs using their decks, navigate the labyrinth, and eventually finding their way to the central chamber where the Rot Deck awaits them as the final combat challenge. This deck is faced together, taking alternate turns. They win if they can defeat the entire Rot deck; they lose if they are defeated by the Rot, or if they fail to complete any single Arc three times in a row.
WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THIS GAME?
Labyrinthians is both a deck builder and an adventure game. Players can choose the cards they gain access to by defining their own route through the board. The game focuses on the story, and mechanics are directly affected by this – successfully challenging a monster and gaining them as a team member strengthens your deck; failing weakens it.
APPENDIX
Ideas for characters and how their decks might be tailored:
Minotaur: A brawl character. Cards focus on occasional strong attacks and might have a large Health stat. Unique action: Gore.
Gorgon: A magic user character. Cards focus on Boosting and might have a high Defense stat. Unique action: Petrify.
Pegasus: An avoidance character. Cards focus on Healing and might have a high Movement stat. Unique action: Recover.
Animated Skeleton: A wear-you-down character. Cards focus on repeated weak attacks and might have a high Movement stat. Unique action: Bite.
Ideas for unique Actions on Monster cards:
Burn: Each card the opponent plays while Burned does 1 damage to its Health or Shield). This effect is removed when the opponent uses the Boost or Heal action.
Weight: While Heavy the opponent may not use card Actions or Abilities to Boost.
Hypnosis: Turn a card in the opponent’s hand/row face down. When played it does 1 damage and nothing else.
Freeze: choose a card in the opponent’s hand/row. It cannot be played until all other cards in the current hand/row have been played.
Petrify: the opponent may not draw cards. This effect is removed when their hand is at 2 or fewer cards.
Oil: when the opponent next makes an attack, you may make an attack on it for free.
Lighten up: choose to permanently remove a card from your deck.
Recover: Equip 3 and draw a number of cards equal to your initial Hand size.
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