In the Heart of Darkness⛺👹 - Limited communication cooperative horror survival game.

in this Cooperative game for one to four players players need to survive the horror on a maab island and escape a life in in the heart of darkness and today we'll be teaching you how to play in the Heart of Darkness game designed and published by the moon girl and hello everyone it's Stella and Taran from meille University okay let's go to the classroom in in the Heart of Darkness players are protagonists who are marooned together on this dark and cursed Island players must work together under the cover of Silence to complete quests and Signal rescue at the Lighthouse all the while avoiding terrible creatures as they break down the gates attack the protagonists and March their way into the Heart of Darkness death is not the end since regardless of player count you'll have seven protagonists with which to rescue the survivors and if you can escape by sea without the darkness exceeding seven then you'll win the game in the Heart of Darkness has a basic board an expansion board and a book of campaigns and we'll show you how to play the basic game first to set up layout the main board and place the darkness counter at one from the spawn deck remove any cards showing the expansion icon and then Shuffle the rest into a face down deck from the loot deck remove any cards showing the expansion icon set aside the seven cards labeled personal item and then Shuffle the rest into a face down deck shuffle the curses and Shuffle the protagonists each player takes one protagonist at random and forms a starting Hand by taking its personal item that is the card which matches this icon on the card and then drawing four other cards from the top of the loot deck looking at them and choosing one to discard and three to keep discarded loot cards are discarded face down and leftover protagonists and personal items are kept for later use each player's stande begins at the stranded ship note that each protagonist has a special ability which may be used through the game keep the other tokens and dice nearby ready for use you may not need all of these in the base game some of them are used in the campaign and keep the other standies nearby ready for use that includes the remaining protagonists and then all of the enemies which from weakest to strongest are the Crawlers devourers and the guardian you're now ready to play in the Heart of Darkness is played in rounds as many rounds as it takes to meet a win or lose condition and each round is played in three phases first is spawning in which you'll will draw a number of Spawn cards and this will determine which creatures will come onto the board and where second is player turns in which each player will take one turn to take a number of actions on the board and third is advanc creatures all of the enemy creatures on the board may move attack or perform other negative effects against the players to win the game The Players must achieve two things firstly they must collectively find from the loop deck and complete a number of quests equal to the number of players secondly they must escape the island which is done by finding at least three sets of radio parts to have one player take those parts to the lighthouse to send out the signal survive at least one more round for the rescue boat to arrive at the harbor and have all players at the haror ready to escape players will lose the game if Darkness ever exceeds seven [Music] or if too many of the game's seven protagonists have been killed in the Heart of Darkness is a game of Highly restricted Communications thematically the island is shrouded in the silence preventing the protagonist from interacting safely with each other what this means for you when you play the game is that you're not allowed to make any verbal or nonverbal communication among the players about the game state except in any specific scenarios which will be described through the rules this counts everything from discussing to try to optimize a move all the way down to groaning at someone else's move if they've done something you don't like any player who breaches the silence is punished by drawing two curse Cards into hand we'll learn more about curses later on if any player does break the silence then that player and that player alone may freely communicate at the other players until either the next action is taken or if it's not the action phase the end of the current phase and there may be times when it pays to use this opportunity tactically the first phase of your turn is spawn check where you are on the darkness track as each spawn card is split into three segments and you'll be resolving the top middle or bottom depending on where you are on this track in each spawn phase you'll draw one card per player in the game and resolve them one at a time in most cases the card will simply show you a location and illustration here it's Easter gate and when you see this take a crawler and add it to that location if you see this icon take a Devourer and add that to the location and where you you see this icon take the guardian and place that at the location and set the guardian's health marker equal to the current Darkness you always Place new creatures from the supply and if there are none available of the type you need then choose any other type from those available however for a Guardian card even if you place a different type of creature you'll still reset the guardian's health from whatever it may be to the current Darkness there is no negative consequence if a creature appears in the same space as a protagonist you'll have until that creature moves or activates to get to safety when drawing cards in this phase you may also come across one or more event cards which will show a series of texts this will have some immediate or ongoing effect and remains in play until the card says to discard it second is the actions phase in this phase each player will take one turn you may take these turns in any order and may change this order from round to round some very limited Communications are allowed when deciding the turn order you're allowed to express whether you want to take the next turn or whether you don't want to take the next turn but that's it you can't explain your reasoning or anything else having chosen or been chosen to take your turn you may now take up to a specific specific number of actions depending on your Play account plus any number of free actions the actions which count towards your action limit are move talk and trade initiate combat or any of these four location actions while your free actions are to play a card discard a card set a trap or loot which is another type of location action as an action you may move when you move move your stande from its location along a single dotted path to an adjacent location there is no limit to how many standies may be in a location and you may freely leave or enter a location containing a creature with no penalty if you take this action at a blue colored tunnel space and there are no creatures present you may use that tunnel to move immediately to any other tunnel if you share a location with one or or other protagonists then as an action you may talk and trade with exactly one of those protagonists those two protagonists May freely exchange loot cards between each other both the active player and the inactive player with the exception that personal item cards may not be exchanged the players may also look at each other's cards even the cards which aren't exchanged on top of that the players control in these protagonists are allowed to break the silence and freely talk quietly between each other you must take care here if you're playing with more than two players this has to be a private conversation just between these two players meaning you should whisper to each other or perhaps use pen and paper or text message if any other player at the table gets involved in this discussion it counts as breaking the silence if you're at a location with one or more creatures then as an action you can initiate combat against all of those creatures at your location you may do this action at most once per location per turn you'll resolve combat using a roll of dice firstly determine your current strength this icon on your protagonist card determines your starting strength and if you take damage through the game you'll lose strength by gaining these strength tokens so as it's laid out here Madam rose has a strength of one and Explorer Vince has a strength of two but if Vince had previously taken one damage then Vince's current strength for this combat would be one next if you have one or more weapon cards in your hand you may play exactly one of these weapons into the combat now take one die for each of your strength and any additional dice listed on the weapon you will roll these dice trying to roll the heart symbol each of these counts as a hit each hit that you roll lets you kill a crawler or kill a Devourer or if you're fighting the guardian reduce the health of the Guardian by one only when its Health reaches zero is it killed then unless it says otherwise discard any weapon that you played in the combat as a free action you may play one or more cards from your hand you'll resolve the card and then generally discard it in the case of your personal item you'll resolve it and then return it to your hand two common types of cards are traps and rituals when you play a trap you will attempt to craft a trap and you'll do a strength test using your current strength plus or minus any modifiers on the Card roll the dice and if you roll any hits gain a trap token you may hold any number of these then whether it was success or fail discard the card if you don't want to leave the crafting of a trap up the chance then you could go and use the location action at the old military complex as an action in this case you must be in the location with no creatures and then play the card while automa ially passing the strength test without a roll you may use the location once per turn as a free action a protagonist may drop a trap token it is carrying in its current location this has no immediate effect but will trap and kill creatures when they move into it trap tokens can be exchanged during a talk and trade action if as a free action you attempt to play a ritual card then you'll be attempting ing to resolve some sort of effect which is printed on that card and these usually quite tactical and situational you'll attempt to resolve this in a similar way to a trap but using a sanity test instead of a strength test here my character has a starting sanity of two has suffered one sanity damage but gets a plus one sanity bonus on this particular ritual so the test would be two dice if you score at least one hit then resolve the ritual however unlike the traps rituals can backfire if you fail the skill test gain one curse card then whether you succeed or fail discard the card similar to how the old military complex helps you with traps the ritual cabin can help you with rituals and if you're in the ritual cabin and there are no creatures present then once per turn you may spend an action to resolve a ritual without having to roll the dice as a final note on traps and rituals do note that there are some negative modifiers on die rolls in the game if one of these ever brings your number of rolled dice below one you will still roll one die there are two other types of cards for items you can play the card face up as a free action and simply resolve the effect on the item then discarded the other type is a quest and the players must must collectively complete as many quests as there are players to win the game each QUEST card is broken into three parts beginning resolution and benefit the begin Quest section tells you how and when you can play this card in this case the card would have to remain in your hand until you initiated combat at the swamp location and at that point you would play the card face up in front of you as a free action then to finish the quest resolve the second part here you would have to go to the old military complex eliminate any creatures present and discard a weapon having completed a quest the card remains in front of you you don't discard it and you place an unlock token over this lock from now on you as the player who completed this Quest has this ongoing benefit under the benefit Box available to you for the rest of the game the other thing that you may do with the cards in your hand is discard one as a free action as with all discards in the game discarding is done face down beside the draw deck limiting your ability to communicate anything through the cards you discard you may not discard your personal item and you may hold a maximum of five cards in hand including your personal item at the end of each of your turns a quest which has been played face up does not count towards this limit as you can see these loot cards are very important and since you need both quests and radio parts to win you'll need to hunt through the deck to find them looting may be done as a free action at a location showing this bag icon once per turn per location and only if there are no creatures present to loot simply draw one card from the deck shuffling the discard pile into a new deck if the deck ever Runs Out looting also attracts the attention of the creature es choose a single closest creature in this case both of these creatures are two steps away from the cave and then move one of those creatures one step towards that looting location be careful this counts as a creature advancement following all the rules of the advanced creatures phase as we'll see later this is when creatures can attack the final action is repair these three green colored Loc s are Gates and they serve as helpful barricades which stop the creatures from advancing every time a creature tries to advance through a gate it gains a damage token and once a gate will gain its third damage token it is instead destroyed a destroyed gate may never be repaired but if you're at a damaged gate location and there are no creatures present then you may spend one action to remove one one of the damage tokens and you may do this multiple times per turn at a single gate the final thing to know for your turn is that while you can enter the Heart of Darkness location giving you passage between the northern and southern sides when you enter this space you will gain a curse card that covers how a player takes a turn and I'll quickly pause and summarize that again players take turns in the order of their choosing and on each turn takes a certain number of main actions and any number of free actions the main actions are move talk and trade with someone in your location fight creatures in your location or complete a location main action which could be building a trap or completing a ritual without a die roll moving through a tunnel or repairing a gate free actions include using a looting location playing a trap or a ritual from your hand with a die roll setting a trap on the board or playing or discarding any other type of card combat and location actions may be taken at most once per turn per location with the exception of the gate which may be repaired multiple times and location actions may not be done if there are any creatures present by the end of your turn you must discard down to five cards in hand including your personal item next you'll move to the advanced creatures phase and this is where the players are in real danger the first thing you'll do is that any protagonist in a location with one or more creatures loses one sanity use these markers to denote a loss of Sanity next each creature on the board starting with the guardian then devourers then crawlers will take one move and for each of them you'll go through the following sequence and be aware you'll resolve all of these steps as well if a creature Moves In Your Action phase Step One is work out where the creature will try to move to Guardians and devourers are Hunters so in each case they will try to move towards the closest protagonist if there are two equally close protagonists whichever one took the more recent turn breaks the tie Crawlers on the other hand are Mindless minions who are making their way towards the Heart of Darkness and each will try to get there by the shortest path step two is to move the creature in most cases the creature will simply move one step in the direction just determined if a guardian or Devourer is already in a space with a protagonist then it simply doesn't move if a creature attempts to move from a gate which has not yet been destroyed then instead it stays where it is and adds a damage token if in doing this a gate would gain its third damage token then discard all damage tokens and replace it with a destroyed token and as penalty increase the darkness by one step now resolve the outcome of the move if a creature moves into a new location where there is a trap then in the case of crawlers and devourers they are killed and in the case of the Guardian it loses three Health the Trap is removed only at the end of the phase meaning it can affect multiple creatures per turn any creature which moved in this way and was not killed by a trap now attacks each protagonist in the destination resulting in those protagonists losing one strength for a Devourer or Guardian which started in the same space as its Target it doesn't move but it still attacks all protagonists in that location note that a crawler trying to move through the gate would attack the gate but would not attack a protagonist while a Devourer or Guardian would attack the protagonist instead of the gate finally if a crawler enters the Heart of Darkness then remove it from the board and increase darkness by one once each creature has advanced in this way you'll proceed back back to phase one across the course of the video we've seen a couple of different ways of gaining curses you gain two curses if you break the silence one curse if you fail a ritual one curse if you enter the harder Darkness or any other specific text effect curse cards go into your hand and they count towards your hand limit meaning they'll force you to discard item cards at the end of your turn each curse card has a specific effect printed on it and this tells you under what conditions you're allowed to discard that curse as soon as it's met discard it face down beside the curse draw deck a protagonist can be killed in one of three ways by running out of strength by running out of Sanity or by gaining four curses whenever a protagonist is killed sh its curse cards back into the curse deck discard all tokens including crafted but unplaced traps return your personal item to the Box place any remaining cards from hand underneath that protagonist's card and lay the protagonist down wherever it died finally increase darkness by one on a future turn any protagonist in the location of the death may as an action pick up all of the cards left behind by the deceased at this point you can remove the protagonist stande and card from the game whoever controlled the deceased protagonist still retains any completed Quest cards they still count towards the wind condition and their benefits may still be used by that player with other protagonists finally a player who begins their turn with no protagonist draws a new protagonist at random from the draw deck forms a starting hand as in setup by drawing four cards discarding one and adding the new personal item to that hand and places the new protagonist stande at the Village rather than at the stranded ship as in setup once the draw deck of protagonists has run out you're nearing one of the two lose conditions for the game the next time a protagonist dies there'll be no one left to replace it with and at the start of that player's next turn the entire team loses the team also loses if Darkness ever increases above seven to win the players must collectively complete two things in parallel quests and Escape for quests the players must collectively complete a number of quest cards equal or higher than the number of players meanwhile escaping is a multi-step process one protagonist must visit the lighthouse with three radio Parts cards in hand and must discard those radio Parts as a free action this hails the rescue boat which is placed on its darkened side at the harbor and immediately increases Darkness on the island to five if not there already at the end of the full round after the darkened boat was placed here the boat is flipped over to its face up side and the players win immediately if all surviving protagonists reach the harbor with the boat in this condition you can add variety to your plays of in the heart of darkness by using the Western Shores expansion or the campaign book West Shores plays under the basic rules and you'll Shuffle the expansion spawn Cards into the spawn deck while you'll replace the base game's quests with the expansion quests The Campaign on the other hand is played in scenarios the win condition may change completely from the one in the base game and whether you win or lose a scenario you'll score hope points and move on to the next one finally the game allows rules for joining or leaving a game during a session and you can do this at any time except that you can't drop out after the boat has been hailed the number of actions you'll take per turn adjusts as players enter or drop out and that's how to play in the Heart of Darkness thank you so much for watching your like and comments are much appreciated subscribe to see what's coming and hopefully you have a great day see you next time