Cooperative Play

So far your first year at the Elementary College has been slightly disappointing. They taught you to light a flickering flame at the tip of your finger, but other than that you've spent much more time reading books than learning powerful spells as future great wizards like you should.

So when you heard about the Big Book of Madness hidden in the great school library, you couldn't help but to sneak in and peek in this intriguing tome in spite of your professors' warnings. When you slowly lift the cover of the terrible book, dozens of dreadful creatures rush out, threatening to destroy the world itself! This was your mistake, and only you can fix it now! Learn from the library to fight back against the monsters, and try not to sink into insanity...

The Big Book of Madness is a challenging co-operative game in which the players are magic students who must act as a team to turn all the pages of the book, then shut it by defeating the terrible monsters they've just freed.

Each player has their own element deck that they build during the game and use for several purposes, such as learning or casting a spell, adding a new element to their deck, destroy or healing a curse. Spells allow you to support your playmates, improve your deck, draw cards, etc. — but the monsters from the book fight back. Each comes with terrible curses that are triggered every turn unless you dispel them in time. They will make you discard elements, add madness cards to your deck, or lose spells...

If you manage to turn six pages and defeat all of the monsters, you win the game!

The Grizzled is a cooperative game about survival in the trenches during the first World War where players win or lose together.

Each round, the current team leader will choose how many cards every player draws. Then, going around the table, players must either play a card in their hand or back out of the mission. Each card represents either threats to the team (such as mortar shells and weather conditions) or negative personality traits (such as frightened or obsessive). At the end of the round, more cards are added to the draw deck. The game ends only if the players can deplete the draw deck as well as their hands without letting time run out.

If one threat shows up too many times, the team fails the mission. The team must play their threats correctly in order to gain any progress. However, most of the information in a players hand remains secret throughout the game.

Planning, teamwork, and a little luck are the tools you'll need to win this cooperative game for two to five players.

Players in The Game try to discard all 98 cards in the deck onto four discard piles in order to win, but they need to do so in the right ways.

Each player starts with 6-8 cards in hand depending on the number of players, and four discard pile prompt cards are on the table: two showing "1" and an up arrow and two showing "100" and a down arrow. On a turn, a player must discard at least two cards from hand onto one or more discard piles, with cards on the 1 piles being placed in ascending order and cards on the 100 piles being placed in descending order. One tricky aspect to play is that you can play a card exactly 10 higher/lower than the top card of a discard pile even when you would normally have to play in a descending/ascending order, e.g., if a 100 discard pile is topped with an 87, you can play any card lower than 87 or you can play the 97.

After a player finishes their turn, they refill their hand from the deck. During play, players cannot reveal exact numbers in their hands, but they can warn others not to play on certain discard piles or otherwise make play suggestions.

Once the deck is emptied, players are required only to play at least one card on a turn. If you play all 98 cards, you win! If you get good, the rules suggest that you play at least three cards a turn to increase the challenge.

Pandemic: The Cure, a dice-based version of the popular Pandemic board game, sets up in less than a minute and plays in 30 minutes. As in the board game, four diseases threaten the world and it's up to your team to save humanity. You and your team must keep the world's hotspots in check before they break out of control, while researching cures to the four plagues.

Players roll dice each turn to determine the actions available to them. They can fly and sail between the six major population centers of the world, treat disease in their current region, collect samples for further study, and exchange knowledge to help them in their goal of discovering cures. Each player takes on a different role that has its own unique set of dice and abilities — and players must take advantage of their specializations if they are to have any hope of winning the game. The Dispatcher, for example, can spend dice to fly others around the board, while the Medic is particularly adept at treating disease. Players can roll their dice as often as they like, but the more times they re-roll for the perfect turn, the more likely the next epidemic will occur.

At the end of each turn, new "infection dice" are rolled to determine the type and location of newly infected populations. If any region on the board is infected with more than three dice of a given color, an outbreak occurs, spreading disease into an adjacent region. If too many outbreaks take place, too many people get infected, or the rate of infection gets too high, all the players lose. If, however, the players can discover the cures to the four diseases, they all win and humanity is saved!

From the box:

A Kafkaesque metaphor about Seekers trying to escape the political, religious, economic and other illusions that entrap them, preventing freedom of Mind and Spirit. Captain K sails to a dark, but enticing Land to look for crew to help cross the dangerous seas to Freedom Island. Constant PATROLS make it difficult for the crew to gather documents & gear needed to make a boarding at any dock. Players are the Crew, seekers after Freedom, helping each other round up credentials which entitle them to board THE GOOD SHIP FREEDOM and avoid those feverish Patrols who never tire vying for your very Being. Courage be with you, Seekers after Truth!