MiniSkull CavernsA 9 Card Dungeon Crawler by George Jaros
1-3 Players - 45-60 minutes
Development Period: January 2016 - March 2016
Status: Playtesting
Designed for: 2016 9-Card Nanogame Print and Play Design Contest
In MiniSkull Caverns, 1-3 heroes will compete to explore the caverns beneath the ruins of MiniSkull Castle and return with riches beyond their wildest dreams. You are one of those optimistic explorers. Are you prepared to risk your life for diamonds the size of a wild boar? Along the way you will encounter monsters, battle other heroes, and recover some priceless gems. Be careful though, the more noise you make, the more you will attract the deadly denizens of MiniSkull Caverns. Before you can escape with your spoils you must battle the affectionately, though unsuitably, named Tiny. Dragons don’t like it when you try to burgle their baubles.
Object: The object of MiniSkull Caverns is to guide your hero through the maze of caverns, managing your strength, and battling monsters and other heroes, all while searching for priceless Gems. Once you have acquired two of these Gems you must return to the center space on the map and battle Tiny in order to escape.
2 Player Variant: When playing with two players you must defeat Tiny and escape with three gems instead of two.
Solo Variant: Collect all four gems and escape before time runs out.
Mechanics: The mechanics use a combination of action selection using a rotating action card and player selection control card, similar to what is in Empire Engine, along with straight up dice combat against monsters and PvP dice combat with strategic modifiers the players choose.
Object: The object of MiniSkull Caverns is to guide your hero through the maze of caverns, managing your strength, and battling monsters and other heroes, all while searching for priceless Gems. Once you have acquired two of these Gems you must return to the center space on the map and battle Tiny in order to escape.
2 Player Variant: When playing with two players you must defeat Tiny and escape with three gems instead of two.
Solo Variant: Collect all four gems and escape before time runs out.
Mechanics: The mechanics use a combination of action selection using a rotating action card and player selection control card, similar to what is in Empire Engine, along with straight up dice combat against monsters and PvP dice combat with strategic modifiers the players choose.
Updates:
1/21/2016 - New name! I decided to call the game MiniSkull Caverns (a play on the word minuscule) instead of the generic Nano Dungeon.
1/22/2016 - Made a few minor tweaks to the rules. Minor change to Control Cards (Block no longer has -1 Attack).
1/23/2016 - Made some changes to the Coop Monster combat (they're now called Disturbed Monsters and the combat isn't cooperative). No component changes.
1/30/2016 - Reformatted the rules to fit the single, double sided page requirements of the contest. No component or actual rule changes.
2/1/2016 - Added Grayscale low ink cards. Also added rules support for SOLO PLAY! No component changes.
2/2/2016 - Minor adjustment to the Solo Variant rules. No component changes.
2/3/2016 - Very minor rules clarification about what cards were what. Also added more difficulty setting variants for Solo Play. No component changes.
3/15/2016 - New Logo added! New artwork for the cards is coming soon.
3/16/2016 - Artwork for the cards is complete! There are now three different files for the cards, Full Art, Low Ink Color, and Low Ink Grayscale. I also updated the rules to include images of the cards and some diagrams now that the 1 page rules restriction has been removed from the contest requirements. No changes to the rules or other cards other than a few typos fixed in the rules. The original 1 page rules document is still available and has had a few typos updated.
10/24/2016 - Playtested at Protospiel Madison and things didn't go too smoothly. It needs some more work, particularly in the PvP battles. I may go back to the drawing board on this now that the contest is over.
PnP Files:
Full Rules: http://georgejaros.com/Files/MiniSkull-Caverns-Rules.pdf
1 Page Format Rules: http://georgejaros.com/Files/MiniSkull-Caverns-Rules-1Page.pdf
Full Art Cards: Support me on Patron!
Low Ink Color Cards: http://georgejaros.com/Files/MiniSkull-Caverns-Cards.pdf
Alternate Grayscale Cards: http://georgejaros.com/Files/MiniSkull-Caverns-Cards-BW.pdf
Also needed: 4 dice, 3 pawns, 4 gems, 1 first player token.
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| Full Art Card fronts and backs. |
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| Playing at the Indie Conquest Game Design meetup. |
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| The very first prototype. |
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| Testing with revisions and b/w printed cards. |
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| Low Ink color cards. |
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