The Night Cage, by Smirk and Dagger, a Spooky Cooperative Strategy game, 1-5 Players lost in a Dark Maze with only a Candle, Fun Horror Themed Tile Laying and Perfect for Game Night, Adults, Teens 14+

Product Information

All games of The Night Cage are played with at least four prisoners in play. In games where there are more prisoners than players, control of extras are either shared equally or passed around the table. A solo game of this has one player controlling all four prisoners. Players also start with one Nerve token. They can only hold two of these maximum and they are used to mitigate damage or make extra moves. A game of The Night Cage begins with each of the 4 Prisoners, indicated by variously colored candle meeples, placed anywhere on the game’s 6×6 board. (Note that the 5-player game has 5 characters and uses a larger 7×7 board.) Each character is armed only with a candle. This candle enables them to see their current tile as well as each orthogonally adjacent tile. The first few tiles placed in this way will be, broadly, safe — but that won’t be the case forever. Players may place their starting tiles anywhere on the board they like, then add tiles based on their visibility.

candlelight only illuminates your immediate surroundings. Worse still, you’re beginning to suspect something else is

The Night Cage is a cooperative, tile placement game that traps 1 to 4 lost souls within an otherworldly labyrinth of eternal darkness. Each prisoner has nothing but a candle to aid them in their escape. But its weak light can only

In this tile-laying horror game, up to 5 players take charge of characters trapped in a mysterious labyrinth. The players must place each new tile carefully to avoid the monsters lurking just out of sight, gather the required Keys, and collectively reach the Gate to win. Night Moves Others reside in the Night Cage, including wax eaters that will snuff out your candle, and bigger monsters that threaten to consume everything you’ve uncovered in the maze. You do have one hope: the ability to gather your nerves, allowing you to move further on a later turn or even charge past a monster. The gameplay of The Night Cage bears that idea out. It’s a surprisingly abstract game: here the horror is born of anticipation of a bad draw rather than the sudden emergence of a truly grotesque nightmare. Even revealing a monster tile doesn’t feel particularly horrifying. It prompts a few moments of calculation as players figure out how to minimize the damage, turning “your worst fear” into something strictly mechanical, and then play proceeds. Personally, while it might make the game a little more complicated, I do wish that the characters had something unique about them other than color. A single special ability for each character would go a long way towards helping the game feel more puzzly as well as more immersive. Or maybe the anonymity of the characters is the point — players are free to project their own fears onto the game’s lonely candle meeples and featureless grid. Each player’s card matches their candle color and makes a great place to store the game’s Nerve tokens and metal Keys. It’s all produced with care and verve, from the board where you put discarded tiles (which helps you see how many you’ve used up and whether the game is still winnable) down to the massive monster tile that features in the advanced version of the game, where multiple sections of floor drop away to reveal a vast abomination.

Things That Go Bump In the Night

Equipped with nothing but dim candles, you must work together to explore the maze and escape. Distressingly, the weak The rough-hewn, stone passages provide barely enough room to crawl through and the walls claw at your skin as you pass.

Rules PDF https://364df235-af4b-4f4a-919f-d6c5b42b7d49.filesusr.com/ugd/693f33_8e545b550de644caa9ef64eb335c4aed.pdf A mechanic I rarely see used well is visual distance. It’s often ruined by the meta “I can see it, so my character should be able to, too!”. It detaches you from the experience and forces you to realise you’re a group sat around a table. And detachment is terrible. The Night Cage does not suffer from detachment, as you cannot see beyond any players’ vision. You’re as lost as the prisoners you embody. And that’s both terrifying and outstanding. Fear is a natural thing. Primal and instinctive, it’s kept man alive and out of danger for as long as we’ve existed. So fears good, right? Depends on the circumstance… Fear is meant to keep you out of trouble and safe, but being constantly exposed to it and trapped in its grasp will undoubtedly break even the strongest mind. Being afraid is okay, being unable to escape it is deadly. The Night Cage by Smirk and Dagger is a game centred on the most basic fear of all: a fear of the dark and the unknown. Escape a dark and dangerous labyrinth before your light goes out! It’s a cooperative tile placement, grid movement game for one to five players! Gameplay

Night Moves

To win, players must each collect a Key, find a Gate, and escape as a group. But escape won't be easy. The weak glow of your candle sheds light on only a small area of the maze at a time. As players move, new pathways are revealed while old ones disappear forever into the darkness, creating an ever-changing play space that requires teamwork and collective strategy to navigate. The Night Cage takes place on a 6-by-6 grid (or it’s 7-by-7 if you’re playing with five people) where players take turns placing tiles that represent the corridors of the maze. Light and darkness are the name of the game here, with a candle in your hand extending your sight only as far as the directly adjacent tiles. Once you move from a tile, any tiles you can no longer see are subsumed by the darkness, forever.