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Darkness Comes Rattling follows the Tribes of Man in their quest to save the world of Tallil from Darkness, a colossal snake that has swallowed the sun. The players must cooperate as they face the challenges of their world, including the formidable shadows that are the minions of Darkness. Eventually, they must choose the bravest among them to enter the mouth of Darkness and rescue the sun.
Each round of the game (known as a "day") is divided into three phases: the Dawn phase, the Challenge phase, and the Dusk phase. In the Dawn phase, each player uses their actions to move about, purify corruption, scout challenges, and share items. In the Challenge phase, each player undertakes a challenge. If they succeed, they gain rewards; if they fail, they incur penalties. In the Dusk phase, game upkeep is performed.
In order to win the game, the players must choose one warrior to enter Darkness as their champion. While the champion battles inside Darkness and attempts to reach the swallowed sun, the other warriors must still defend Tallil from the encroaching shadows, lest they corrupt the world and plunge everything into eternal night. If Darkness finishes swallowing the sun, or the shadows gain too much influence in the world, then the players lose the game.
- Fantastic theme
- Coolest board game title
- Interactive timer design
- Creative design
- Good value if purchased cheaply
- Components have a mass-market feel and are not high quality (board split on first opening).
- The game is very difficult.
- Documentation is a bit weird (cheat sheet missing actions, rulebook missing a key healing rule).
- Tribal heroes must rescue the sun from a giant snake that has swallowed it, before it is fully digested.
- Escape from 100 Million BC
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Action Points — Warriors have a set number of action points (four) to spend on their turn for actions like moving, scouting, purifying, or giving items.
- cooperative play — Players work together to achieve a common goal.
- Corruption — Corruption tokens can be added to regions or directly onto warriors, negating dice rolls of specific values. If a space gets corrupted three times, it is replaced by a shadow.
- Darkness Die — Rolled during challenges, its results can move the sun on the darkness track or trigger specific events.
- Darkness track — A track representing the sun's digestion; if it reaches the end, the game is lost. It also acts as an interactive element that can trigger various events.
- event cards — These cards introduce narrative elements, often with negative consequences for players, such as being exiled from a region.
- Hero progression — Warriors can become stronger by facing challenges and gaining rewards like items or bones.
- Item Crafting/Acquisition — Bones gained from challenges can be traded at merchants for equipment like bows, axes, spears, or tools that provide bonuses.
- Legendary Items — Four specific legendary items (North Wind's Torque, South Wind's Shield, East Wind's Mask, West Wind's Sandals) can be gained from challenges and are important for the final race against the sun.
- Shadows — Shadows are difficult encounters that can only be defeated with Spirit weapons.
- Skill challenges — Players face challenges associated with one of three skills (mind, body, spirit - yellow, red, blue) and must meet or beat target numbers on dice rolls, with bonuses for matching skills or equipment.
- Spirit Transformation — When a warrior loses all health, they turn over to become a spirit with zero health, gaining health back at the start of their turn, and can transform back into a warrior when fully healed.
- Wind Spirits — Players can praise or corrupt wind spirits, affecting challenge difficulty in their respective regions. If all wind spirits are destroyed, the players lose.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- First of all that is the coolest title for a board game ever if there was an award for best board game title darkness comes rattling would definitely win it.
- and man that is such a cool theme I love that theme so much
- I really like how this Darkness track is not just a timer it's also a place and a way for the players to interact with the board it's an interactive timer and I think that is really really cool because I'm not usually a big fan of timers unless they offers something more than just a arbitrary time limit to the game and I think this does that well.
- just a really really Creative Design I think
- the components are not very good the first time I took the board out and opened it up it split from the backing and I had to glue it the cardboard for the board is really really thin and it's uh the image is just barely glued on there it has more of a mass Market feel than something that a lot of us are used to with a hobby Style game
- the game is insanely difficult