So, first of all, I currently only have the rules for this game, rather than the full game. I wanted to get some opinions on if the game sounds fun before starting to make cards for it.

This is an adventure/horror type of game. It's cosmic-horror-themed, but I haven't tried particularly hard to stick to any sort of cosmic horror ethos; it's much more on the adventure than the horror side. It was originally inspired by Arkham Horror, but I've since moved away from that in an attempt to make things at least marginally less random and more unique.


First of all, the various areas of the game:

---The character sheet

The main mechanical elements of the character sheet are the endurance and willpower. A character's physical and mental fortitude is represented by two hands of cards with numbers from 1 to 10. The hand-sizes for endurance and will vary from character to character, with the average being seven. They are represented by areas on the character sheet where those cards can be placed. Those slots can also contain things other than their matching card type (more on that later). Starting decks each contain two copies of each value from 1 to 10

A character will also have a few starting skills, which are just various bonuses to make the characters a bit more unique. An example skill might be "Aces High: You may count will cards with a value of 1 as 10s"

---The omen deck, fate deck, and sigils

The omen deck has various things in it, usually bad things that want to eat your face (or else help other things eat your face). Each omen card will, again, have a semi-arbitrary effect. Everyone might have to test strength (more on that later) to avoid falling asleep, for example. Omen cards also have a symbol on them. Whatever that symbol is, put an omen token on the matching sigil when that card resolves. Wherever that symbol shows up in the game in place of a number, it's considered to be a number equal to the omen tokens on that sigil.

The fate deck is a communal deck of cards. It contains the values 1 and 10, as well as the five omen symbols. It is used when your fate is tested. Cards drawn from the fate deck are shuffled back in afterwards.

---The board

The 'board' is actually made out of tiles drawn from a stack. Each tile is a room in the place you are currently exploring, and they're drawn as they're explored.

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Next comes setup:

---Initial Setup

1. Distribute player sheets. This can be done however you wish.
2. Create starting player decks (2x 1-10 for endurance and willpower)
3. Shuffle the location deck into five piles. In a single-round game, use only one. In a multi-round game, use one per round.
4. If a character has any additional setup to do, do so (for example, if they start with an item)
5. Shuffle all non-player decks (Omen, Scavenge, Boon, Encounter, Fate)

---Round Setup

Do these steps once per campaign round.

1. Each player shuffles their willpower and endurance decks
2. Take the exit tile from the box and shuffle it into the bottom five cards of this round's location deck.
--2a. If you're doing a single-round game, you may wish to use a throne-room tile instead. If you do so, the god waiting inside it is the god linked to the current highest omen symbol.

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Now, on to the gameplay:

---Turn order

During each turn, each player does the following things:

Refresh
Peek
Move
Interact
Omen

---Refresh

Each player turns all face-down cards in their play area face-up. Effects that say the occur during the refresh phase happen now. Those players then draw endurance and willpower cards until all endurance and willpower slots are filled. If a player can't refill all their endurance and willpower slots, they may not move and must rest this turn.

---Peek

Each player may look at an adjacent face-down room tile.

---Move

Each player may move to an adjacent room and (if it is face-down) turn it face up. When a tile is turned face-up this way, put face-down room tiles in every adjacent space.

---Interact

For each room turned face up this turn, the players in that room draw encounter cards equal to its encounter number and resolve them. Each player who is not in a room turned face up this turn may scavenge or rest. Scavenging works by drawing scavenge cards equal to that room's encounter number, resting allows players to shuffle their discard piles into their decks.

---Omen

The players as a group draw and resolve a single omen card. If it is a curse, the player with the fewest curses takes it.

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Now, some more details on encounters and scavenge cards, as well as boons.

---Encounter card types

Encounter cards are divided into two types: Events and Fights.

---Events

Events are, again, a semi-arbitrary occurrence. Usually, they will require a skill test to avoid a penalty or earn a bonus. Some events affect all players, some affect only one player, and some affect multiple players in order. In the case of events that only affect one player or one player at a time, the players it could affect choose the target or order.

---Fights

The players always go first in fights unless a card says otherwise.

At the beginning of each player fight turn, each fighting player plays an endurance card and draws fight tokens equal to the value of that card. That player then matches those tokens to attacks on the card in order to deal damage. A zombie might take two damage from a single 'punch' fight token, whereas an animated suit of armor make take two to deal one damage.

Players also might have alternate attacks. In that case, the player may expend tokens that match that card either to gain some bonus or treat them as an alternate attack type. A magic strike spell might allow a player to spend two punch tokens instead of a single magic token, or a fireball spell might allow a player to spend two magic tokens to deal one direct damage.

After the player turn is the monster turn. The monster will have some instructions listed as their attack. Usually, the players will each have to perform a test, and take some penalty if they fail, often in the form of atrophy.

After the players beat the monster, they draw boon cards equal to its level and divide them between them. If they fail to beat the monster, each player in the combat must take a wound or madness and retreat to the previous room. The monster and all unrevealed encounter cards are left on the room's space for the next player group that visits that room.

---Tests

There are five kinds of tests:
Strength A/B: Look at your Endurance cards. You may play up to A Endurance cards. If they total up to at least B, the test is a success.
Speed A/B: Look at your Endurance cards. You may play Endurance cards totaling up to any number less than A. If you play at least B cards this way, the test is a success.
Lore A/B: Look at your Willpower cards. You may play up to A Willpower cards. If they total up to at least B, the test is a success.
Creativity A/B: Look at your Willpower cards. You may play Willpower cards totaling up to any number less than A. If you play at least B cards this way, the test is a success.
Fate A/B: Draw A fate cards. If at least one is worth less than B, you pass the test.

Due to the different ways these tests work, both high and low value cards are useful (albeit in different circumstances)

---Scavenge cards

Scavenge cards represent a character looking around the room for anything useful. They are mostly neutral or good, but will occasionally have a negative effect similar to an encounter. The majority of scavenge cards will be items, which are added to the inventory of whoever finds them. They can also be events, which work the same as encounter card events.

---Boons

Boon cards are always positive. They can be powerful items, blessings, healing, or even extra skills!

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How a round/single-round game ends:

---Finding the/an exit

Whenever the 'exit' card is on the board, players may choose to immediately end the round/game. This is considered a victory.

---Survival

Whenever an omen reaches 10 symbols, the round/game immediately ends in victory.


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In addition to playing single rounds, the game can be played in a campaign form:

---Between campaign rounds

First of all, note down which symbol has the most omen markers on it. That symbol is conquered; cards aligned with it are discarded and redrawn, and all instances of it on other cards are considered to be tens or zeroes, whichever is most beneficial. Then, remove all omen markers from all omens. Put a number of markers on each omen symbol equal to the current campaign round. Reshuffle endurance and willpower cards into their player's decks, but do not reshuffle any other discard piles.

---The final campaign round

When only one omen symbol remains, the sealed god associated with that symbol awakens. Shuffle a throne-room into the location deck instead of an exit and set that god's card aside. During this round, all cards other than endurance and willpower cards with any conquered symbol on them are discarded and redrawn.

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And now for the remaining miscellany:

---Endurance and Willpower

Whenever a card references your Endurance or Willpower, this refers to each Endurance or Willpower slot not currently holding a spell, rune, madness, or injury card.

---Spells and Runes

Spells cards are special cards that take up Willpower card slots, whereas Runes are special cards that take up Endurance card slots. Each one can be either active or passive. An active spell or rune has a condition and an effect; complete the condition to gain the effect. You can attempt the condition at any time when the effect would be relevant. A passive spell or rune simply has a static effect.

Take note, you cannot randomly get rid of spells or runes, they must be removed by effects that specifically allow you to do so.

---Madness and Injuries

Madness cards take up willpower slots, whereas Injury cards take up endurance slots. They are similar to spells and runes except that Madness and Injuries are always bad and always passive. They tend to be more difficult to remove than Spells or Runes are.

---Sanity Loss and Wounds

Whenever you take Sanity Loss, if you have any set of willpower cards that is greater than or equal to the sanity loss, you may reveal and atrophy those cards. If you don’t or can’t, gain a madness card. Wounds work similarly, save that they use endurance cards and injury cards in place of willpower and madness.

---Skills and Items

Skill cards and item cards simply go into your play area at no additional cost. They can be activated or passive, similar to Spells or Runes. Items can be dropped or traded, whereas skills cannot. Skills are, however, generally more powerful. You may only hold a number of items equal to your endurance; all others are dropped in your current room, but may be picked up by other players in the same room as them at any time.

---Atrophy

Atrophied cards are permanently removed from your deck and discard pile.

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So, okay, not necessarily the most organized thing. If I have any gaps in the rules or otherwise missed anything, let me know. Even if not, I'd appreciate hearing your opinion, and constructive criticism is always welcome. Thanks for reading.

As a complete noob to board games of this kind, the mechanics seem extremely complex for a board game. I know I wouldn't have the patience to learn all those rules on my own, nor to sit through what looks like a pretty involved sequence of play. I think the concept would both run more smoothly and have more outreach as a computer game, perhaps a procedurally generated dungeon crawler.

On another note, I do like the flavor of the players as badass cosmic-horror-punching adventurers. I bet you could get some great character cards and monsters out of that. If you need help thinking of concepts for characters or monsters, I'd be happy to lend a hand.

doesn't seem all that complicated for the genre. that said, it's really hard to eyeball a whole new game for things like fun. nothing immediately jumps out at me as wrong but you're really gonna have to playtest if you want to know what works. and expect to get your numbers way wrong at first.

Looks super fantasy flight games in terms of clutter. I only read through it once, so I probably missed a lot, despite reading rulebooks as a hobby. Initial thoughts that came to mind:
First of all, why wouldn't I want to just scavenge every turn until the counter reaches victory?
Secondly, having two hands of cards is just gross, although it's kind of better if it's public (which idk if it is), but then it's not really a "hand of cards". In fact, I don't really see the point of having two different decks that are so mechanically similar. I think it would be cool if it was kind of like Mage Knight, which uses a deck-building system and a hand of card to determine your possible actions. ymmv
Having to play cards and then draw tokens seems really inelegant. I also don't see why you settled on drawing tokens instead of rolling dice, which I assume are roughly equivalent, except more cumbersome to actually do.
I personally believe the turn system would be more interesting if it used an action point system (so you would have to choose between what actions, but could possibly repeat them). Might be subject to personal preference, but I believe it makes your turns feel more meaningful in terms of decision making.
Does the game try to stop the "alpha gamer syndrome" that often occurs in co-op games, and if so, how?

I guess I'll respond in order:

1. That was my fault; originally the counter reaching the end was a fail condition. That doesn't work though, since it's not a hard time limit but rather a variable time limit. I'll probably just make it so that each room can only be scavenged once.
2. They're not exactly "hands", admittedly. They go in a specific place on the character sheet. There is a little bit of deck building, but it's not exactly mage-knight-ish (I do really like mage knight though, maybe I'll work on a game in that vein at some point). It's more that you lose cards from your endurance and willpower decks over time, and certain effects can add cards back in. There's also the spells and runes, which fill a similar sort of purpose, but stay in your 'hand' instead of getting shuffled in to your deck. I'm going to say that the cards are private for reasons I'll explain later.
3. Again, this is mostly something I left as-is from the original version. Originally you'd hold a selection of tokens, and only draw from the bag to replenish in when resting or if you run out and panic during combat. Since I cut that out, custom dice would probably be way better, but it didn't occur to me to change that.
4. I'm not too sure about adding action points.
5. This game doesn't really have any specific measures to stop the 'alpha gamer' syndrome. The only real way to do that is to either enforce some level of hidden knowledge or to add a 'traitor'. As mentioned, I've decided to make a player's endurance and willpower private in order to prevent a bit of this (as well as to encourage players to roleplay a bit, i.e. saying "I feel pretty healthy" as opposed to "I have two 7 endurance cards"), but it's not really a good enough measure honestly. Although... I could make it part of the rules that no player is allowed to specifically reference the game text on any hidden card. So, a player who peeks at a tile could say that it looks dangerous, but they couldn't say the exact number of encounter cards.

And yes, it's a bit cluttered. I did mention that it was originally inspired by Arkham Horror.