Episode 205: The Night Cage

The Night Cage is designed by Christopher Ryan Chan, Chris McMahon and Rosswell Saunders. Published by Smirk and Laughter Games. The Night Cage is a fully co-operative, horror-themed tile-placement game that holds 1-5 players in about 40-60 minutes. To win, players must each collect a key, find a gate, and escape as a group before time runs out. Tiles will be drawn from a stack which represents the amount of time players have to escape and be placed onto the board throughout the game. Since players only have a candle to light their path only the tiles orthogonally adjacent to the players tile will remain on the board. Meaning that as players explore around, tiles will be removed from the board and discarded; always changing the landscape of the board. On your turn players Either stay or move: Stay- in which you gain a nerve and draw a tile, placing adjacent to you. Nerve tokens can be discarded to reduce the damage by monsters or to move again. Move-Move 1 space orthogonally along a connected path. If you move onto a key,  take one. Then draw tiles according to how many connected paths your tile has; thus exposing more of the board. There are a lot of different monsters in this game that all play differently however the common theme is that when their tile is drawn it is placed on the board and when triggered they will either cause players to fall into a pit, snuff out their candle and/or deplete tiles from the stack.  If all 4 keys and all players are at the same gate, you win! If the 4th gate tile is discarded, you lose. If too many keys have been discarded, you lose. If you cannot assemble 4 keys and everyone at a gate before time is up, you all lose.