Indiegogo is committed to accessibility. If you have difficulty using our site, please contact support@indiegogo.com for assistance or view our accessibility notice by clicking here

This campaign is closed

Carcosa - A Lovecraftian game of Cults and Madness

Summon Lost Carcosa in a tile-laying, area-control game of secrets, schemes and sacrifice!

You may also be interested in

Caret Left
Caret Right
Closed
Closed
Closed
Closed
Closed

Carcosa - A Lovecraftian game of Cults and Madness

Carcosa - A Lovecraftian game of Cults and Madness

Carcosa - A Lovecraftian game of Cults and Madness

Carcosa - A Lovecraftian game of Cults and Madness

Carcosa - A Lovecraftian game of Cults and Madness

Summon Lost Carcosa in a tile-laying, area-control game of secrets, schemes and sacrifice!

Summon Lost Carcosa in a tile-laying, area-control game of secrets, schemes and sacrifice!

Summon Lost Carcosa in a tile-laying, area-control game of secrets, schemes and sacrifice!

Summon Lost Carcosa in a tile-laying, area-control game of secrets, schemes and sacrifice!

Sarah Kennington
Sarah Kennington
Sarah Kennington
Sarah Kennington
2 Campaigns |
Linlithgow, United Kingdom
$34,886 USD $34,886 USD by 932 backers
$32,799 USD by 892 backers on Jun 30, 2017 with another platform
Highlights
Mountain Filled 2 Projects Mountain Filled 2 Projects
Overview
In Carcosa you must summon the city of the Tattered King, one tile at a time! Use your cultists to control ley lines, conduct rituals and explore the districts of Carcosa itself. If your cultists displease you, you can sacrifice them to the dark waters of Lake Hali for the pleasure of the King.

What's going on here then?

Carcosa is a board game that successfully funded on Kickstarter in July 2017, exceeding it goal by over 400% and hitting all 10 of its stretch goals.

Production is now underway with the manufacturer and this campaign will allow you to pre-order Carcosa to be part of that first print run!

Because the crowdfunding campaign is complete on Kickstarter by preordering directly here from Indiegogo you know exactly what you're getting. There's no funding goals, no stretch goals and none of the uncertainty that accompanies being a backer in a crowdfunding campaign but you will still get all of the additional content unlocked or added during the campaign!

That means the two mini-expansions, five art cards, four unique chapter house cards, four custom prophet meeples, a box liner, solo rules and multilingual reference cards will be included with every copy sold here!

Have a look below - we hope you like what you see.

-- One Free Elephant

Your copy of Carcosa will contain the following game components:

Plus the following:

These are some of the features and highlights you'll encounter while playing Carcosa that people have been getting excited about!

Each time you play, you summon a different Carcosa. Each player must compete for their choice from a shifting display of tile stacks.

In this animation: The Orange Cult selects a tile.

This makes Carcosa strategic. You must decide not just what’s good for you, but also what you need to deny your opponents! 

Once chosen, each unstable tile must be added to Carcosa either to expand it or to replace another unstable, unguarded tile.  

In this animation: New tiles are added to Carcosa.

This makes Carcosa rewarding. Even though you are competing, you have, together with your opponents, created a unique landscape through the game.

You will deploy your cultists to districts, ley lines and ritual sites to expand your domain, protect it and even invade your opponents.

In this animation: Brown is claiming ley lines, Orange is claiming a district, Purple makes sacrifices and Blue claims a ritual site.

These are familiar mechanics but each has unique thematic purpose and benefits that make them strategically different from other tile laying games.

Any tile with a yellow tint may have a hidden feature that is only revealed when the tile is “stabilised” (and flipped over)! This gives Carcosa players secret plans, the ability to bluff and the need to analyse their opponents moves to try and discern what secrets they know about Carcosa.

In this animation: Blue adds a tile and a sacrifice. A feaster is revealed and devours three cultists!

Carcosa played well is a game with a rhythm - you plan, you build and then you reveal over a number of turns. This makes the building tense and the successful reveal (or your opponents thwarting of it!) exciting. Carcosa is balanced to reward long-term strategies over building small things frequently.  

Your cultists go mad when they succeed and must recover before they can be reused. Mechanics are built to support the theme, giving a sense of "person" to your cultists and a sense of mystery to Carcosa. (What did they see?)

In this animation: Orange cultists recover their sanity.

You will build power in 3 ways in Carcosa:   

  • Occult Power will simply drive you towards victory.  
  • You will recruit more cultists as you explore the districts of Carcosa to gain more control over the landscape.  
  • You will empower Ritual Stones with game changing spells you can use later to sway the game in your favour.  

Choosing what to concentrate on each turn provides short-term goals that will hopefully feed your long-term schemes!

There are two, mutually exclusive, ways to win in Carcosa. This means late in the game one or more players can be trying to win one way while the others try and thwart them and work towards their own victories. Uneasy alliances can form and are often betrayed – just like you would expect from a group mad cults with a common goal!

Each player leads a Lovecraftian Cult. Taking turns, their Prophet selects a tile representing a part of Carcosa and adds it to a ethereal landscape of ritual sites, ley lines, towers and domes. Players can then deploy Cultists to control a ley line, conduct a ritual or explore the districts they have summoned.

But Carcosa is no normal city:

  • Tiles must be stabilised with power drawn from ley lines or they may be reshaped by other cults! 
  • New cultists may be recruited by performing the Forbidden Play at theatres you reveal! 
  • Your cultist will be driven mad by the power they desire or sacrificed to the horrific Feaster from Beyond for even greater power! 
  • Ritual stones will let you cast game-changing spells! 

The game ends when a Cult completes the Summoning of the King Himself or when enough of Carcosa has been summoned that it becomes a permanent feature of our Earth. Only one Cult can succeed in one of these insane tasks - but in Lovecraft’s mythos, can one truly call that winning?

If you want to learn more about how Carcosa plays, you can read the main rule book or the solo rule book by following these links:

 

Alternatively, and for the first time for us, you can try the virtual version if you have a copy of Tabletop Simulator!

There are loads of detailed Video reviews and previews in the Gallery section at top of this InDemand page but you may be interested in the following too:

-

(If you want to skip the banter, chat about other games and Nigel generally behaving like a gremlin in the engine room, the bit about Carcosa starts at 23m 27s.)

We will be shipping from within the EU with the distributor Games Quest so that our European and UK backers, like our US and Australian backers, will not have to pay any customs charges.

Nigel Kennington, Designer 

Nigel is a one time video game designer turned educator. The rules, the rules rewrites, the rules rewrite rewrites, the glorious spelling mistakes - Nigel provides them all.

www.onefreeelephant.co.uk
Email him! (He's needy.) nigel@onefreeelephant.co.uk

Sarah Kennington, Project Manager

Professional project manager with 20 years of experience and designer of One Free Elephant's successful first game ORE-SOME! Sarah is organising manufacturing, shipment, dealing with most of the logistical issues and generally talking to humans like a proper grownup.

www.onefreeelephant.co.uk
Email her! (She gets stuff done.) sarah@onefreeelephant.co.uk

David Franco Campos, Artist 

Freelance artist working in both video games and board games, the superb “signature pieces” for the game - the box art, logo, rulebook illustrations and the cult mat - have been designed by David. 

https://www.artstation.com/artist/davidfranco

Jason Kimmings, Graphic Design 

Professional graphic designer and photographer, Jason has designed the luxurious rulebook and enticing box base.

http://www.photographyjk.co.uk

Colin Briggs, Modeller 

An Edinburgh based lecturer with over 10 years teaching and 7 years industry experience in animation, UX and Web. Colin has contributed to the tile art and the buildings of Carcosa.

http://www.colinbriggs.com

 

Looking for more information? Check the project FAQ
Need more information
Let us know if you think this campaign contains prohibited content.

Choose your Perk

featured

Carcosa - Single copy

Currency Conversion $43 USD
£35 GBP
One copy of Carcosa plus all unlocked stretch goals and free shipping to USA and UK.
Estimated Shipping
November 2017
14 claimed
Ships worldwide.

Digital Art Pack

Currency Conversion $6 USD
£5 GBP
A digital pack to print at home, includes • HD version of the Box art to adorn your desktop • 5 HD art cards to print at home Please note this is for personal use only and must not be used for any commercial purpose without written permission from One Free Elephant.
Estimated Shipping
September 2017
0 claimed

Carcosa /Digital Art Combo

Currency Conversion $48 USD
£39 GBP
One copy of Carcosa plus all unlocked stretch goals and free shipping to USA and UK. A digital pack to print at home, includes • HD version of the Box art to adorn your desktop • 5 HD art cards to print at home Please note this is for personal use only and must not be used for any commercial purpose without written permission from One Free Elephant.
Estimated Shipping
November 2017
1 claimed
Ships worldwide.

Carcosa/Solo Play Meeple Combo

Currency Conversion $53 USD
£43 GBP
One copy of Carcosa with all the stretch goals The Solo Play Bling Pack - 16 new custom meeples to enhance the solo play with 7 detectives, 7 occultists, 1 scholar and 1 scholarly assistant.
Estimated Shipping
November 2017
22 claimed
Ships worldwide.

Carcosa - 2 copies

Currency Conversion $86 USD
£70 GBP
Two copies of Carcosa plus all unlocked stretch goals. This pledge offers free shipping to the UK and USA and subsidised shipping to the rest of the world with this reward held at the same rate as the single pledge.
Estimated Shipping
November 2017
1 claimed
Ships worldwide.

You may also be interested in

Up Caret