Lockup: Breakout is live (Explore the prison catacombs)
Update: Lockup: Breakout has launched on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 17 days. You may back just the expansion, or order it together with the base game.
Our preview post below was published on May 21.
Lockup: Breakout is an expansion to the 1-5 player worker placement game Lockup: A Roll Player Tale. This time, your crew of prisoners has discovered a network of underground tunnels rumoured to conceal treasure. You therefore send a seeker to explore them, while the rest of the crew tries to earn reputation above ground. It will launch on Kickstarter on May 25.
In the solo mode of the base game, your prisoner crew has to deal with the prison guards, and the same goes for the Breakout expansion. In the course of six rounds, if your crew has earned more reputation points than the guards, you win. Each round is split in 3 phases: Roll Call, Lights Out, and Patrol Phase.
In the Roll Call phase, you draw and place one guard face down in each of seven prison locations. Then, on the guards' turn, you flip one guard card over, and draw one location card from the location deck. If the revealed card shows a location, you place a guard from the guard deck there. If it's an off-duty card, nothing happens. Then, on your turn, you assign your crew tokens to a location. The Breakout expansion introduces one new crew member, the seeker, which is assigned like any other crew. It also adds a new type of card called Legend that either rewards or punishes you depending on the strength of the crew token you placed on it.
In the Lights Out phase, all locations are resolved in numerical order, and some have special rules for the way guards gather resources, craft items, and seize goons. Goons may have suspicion icons on their cards thus earning you or the guards suspicion cubes (bad for reputation). In Breakout, you resolve the locations in the same way, but if your seeker is at a tunnel location, you may advance your marker on the catacombs board.
In the Patrol phase, if the resources you gained exceed your storage limit, your have to discard the excess (guards don't have a limit). If you have more suspicion cubes than the guards, you lose 6 reputation points, and the same applies to the guards. In this step in the Breakout expansion, you reveal a new Legend card. If it is the end of the 6th round, you proceed to scoring.
That Catacombs Board looks kinda cool. Until now, I'd never heard of Lockup. The original game even has a Greek Rulebook!