SPIEL Essen Pickup Pre-order: TWO ROOMS, THE SLASHER

During this cooperative game, players must close their eyes during their partner's turn and cannot communicate about anything happening in the game directly!

After setting up the two rooms (using parts of the box as the doors) and the wounded area card, players shuffle the deck of character cards, set it to the side of the rooms, and begin the game.

On a given player's turn, they draw a card, then choose which of the two rooms they want to guide that character into. The player opens that door, then checks the skills of all characters within the room, activating them in ascending numerical order. Skills can be simple things like attacking a certain color card, moving a specific card into the adjacent room, or even adding cards from (or returning cards to) the deck. 

After activating all the skills, the player then states one of the following to their partner, based on the outcome of the turn:

"Closed" (if no characters were moved to the wounded area), 

"Blood" (if a character other than the big bad vampire Vamps was moved to the wounded area),

or "Escape" (if Vamps himself was moved to the wounded area). The game continues this way, with each player closing their eyes on their partner's turn, until any one of the ending conditions are met.

If the character Nina, who the group is trying to rescue from the vampires, is moved to the wounded area, the players lose. If Vamps, the main vampire, is moved to the wounded area, however, the players move on to the "Find Nina Phase". During this phase, the current player will need to, determine whether Nina is currently in the Red Room, the Green Room, or the Deck. If their deduction is correct, the players win the game - but you only get one shot!! If wrong, it's a player loss!

In THE SLASHER, you and a partner will work to escape an isolated campground while a knife-wielding killer stalks in silent pursuit. Players will play tricks to distribute different colored number cards to each other to gain different effects during the next phase, where they will then search for 4 of the 5 escape items needed to get out of the campground...but be careful! The killer is hidden somewhere amongst the item cards. In this game, death lurks behind every corner... Below is a general overview of the game. More detailed rules can be found in the rulebook.

Game Setup:
Set up the game as depicted above by preparing the player/health cards, trap tiles, item card deck, and the area card deck. Then shuffle the number cards and distribute a hand of 8 to each player. Set aside the remaining 4 number cards and flip over the top card - this color of this card is the trump color for the round. Flip over the first area card - the arrow on the card points in the direction of the starting player for the round. This occasionally changes round to round depending on the area card.

Play Phase:
During the play phase, players will play 8 tricks by playing one card each, being careful to not let the killer overhear any important information (you can't talk about your hand, for example, visible information and strategy discussions are fine). The starting player for the round leads the first trick.

Tricks are decided based on the following criteria:

The winner of the trick takes the two cards that were played and places them in front of them so that they are still visible. The winner of the trick then leads the next trick, playing their card first.

The Play Phase isn't without danger, however. The killer has scattered traps around the area to catch people fleeing, so players must move carefully to avoid them. Each area card has a rule that players must follow during the play phase to avoid the traps - if players break an area rule, they immediately flip over one of the 3 trap tiles. If players end up setting off all 3 traps, they immediately lose the game, regardless of their current health. Each area also has a different "effect;" the area effect is not a rule that can be broken, it is something that occurs automatically while in that area. These range from beneficial effects (like being able to hand over items to each other) to extremely detrimental ones (like losing the effect of one of your green cards).

Item Phase:
After the Play Phase, players move on to the item phase. This is where the colors of each number card come into play. Red number cards increase the damage taken from the killer by the number of "slash" icons on the card. Green cards can be used to nullify the effect of red cards - red cards with more "slash" icons require more green cards to nullify. Yellow cards allow players to reveal more item cards - players will always reveal the same number of item cards as the number of yellow cards they won (unless they won 0 yellow cards, in which case they still reveal 1 item card). White cards change their effect based on the player's health at the start of the item phase. Healthier players' white cards are treated the same as green cards, but as a player's health goes down, they are eventually treated as yellow, then red!

Players have a chance to use any item cards they have collected before each player takes a turn revealing cards from the item deck (based on the number of yellow cards they have). The player may choose 1 of the revealed cards, placing the rest in the discard pile. Players should prioritize taking the "escape items," as these are what is needed to escape the campground and win the game!

If the killer is drawn, the current player will stop revealing cards immediately and take damage equal to 1 + the number of "slash" icons on the red cards they have in front of them. This player also can't take any item cards. Once each player has had a chance to reveal item cards, players will proceed to setup for the next round!

End of the Game:

Players win if they collect 4 out of the 5 escape items mixed into the item deck.

Players lose if either player's health hits 0 or if all 3 trap tiles are triggered due to breaking too many area rules.

Good luck escaping the campground!

Click here to view/download a PDF rulebook for TWO ROOMS. (Not yet available!)

Click here to view/download a PDF rulebook for THE SLASHER.