Green Hell: The Board Game is live (again)

Update: the new campaign is live on Kickstarter, with new pledge levels. Both prices and the goal of the campaign have been lowered. The dual layered player and camp boards are included in the box right from the start (they were stretch goals in the first campaign).

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Earlier update: the campaign for Green Hell was cancelled. It will relaunch on September 1 with restructured pledge levels and rewards.

Our announcement below was posted on August 4.

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Green Hell: The Board Game is a 1-4 players game of exploration and survival set in the Amazon rainforest and inspired by a video game of the same name. You can either play the game as a campaign over multiple sessions or do a one-session survival scenario. In solo, you must play the game two-handed. The game is live on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 19 days.You can pledge for the game or deluxify it with add-ons like an insert or a cardboard dice tower or even one that's shaped like a creepy tree.

Image source: Kickstarter campaign

Every character card comes with specific stats and a unique skill. If you play a campaign scenario, you will play on a selection of map tiles that are randomly selected and face down at the beginning of the game. Each scenario specifies your objective and the number of days you have to fulfill it.

Each day is divided into four parts during which each character can perform up to three actions from:

• move - up to twice from one tile to an adjacent one

• explore - flip an unexplored map tile face up

• interact - following the instructions on your current tile

• harvest - get the resources indicated on the map tile

• search - find random resources on any map tile

• attack - roll a die for both you and your opponent, and add the result to your respective strength value

By spending energy, you can decide to push your limits and make your actions more powerful: searching a tile more thoroughly, harvesting more resources from it, moving by an additional tile, etc. If you run out of energy, however, your character is exhausted, and cannot do anything anymore until the night.

You can also engage in a variety of free actions, such as crafting new items with the stuff you collected or managing your backpack. Items in the game are represented by little polyomino tiles that you must arrange in a rectangle grid on your player board: the backpack. Your carrying capacity is therefore limited, but you can drop items on tiles and pick them up later on.

Image source: Kickstarter campaign

Then comes the Night phase, in which your characters will recover their energy points depending on their hydration level if they successfully reached a camp. You then draw a card from the Night deck, that also acts as a timer for the scenario you are playing. The card indicates how many cubes you have to throw in the “Creepy dice roller”, a sort of dice tower: if they fall out on the front, they must be allocated to the camp structures you've crafted as damage - destroying them if they exceed their durability level. Finally, players must consume a unit of water and a unit of food, and roll a die to see if they don’t suffer from diarrhea or parasites, respectively.

Many perils await in the jungle. If you are defeated during an encounter, you will lose stamina, and if you are left with none, your character is dying. The other character can hurry and try to save them by providing the dying character food and water before nightfall, otherwise, that character will die and the game will be lost. You must also track your sanity level; if the two characters are separated by more than two tiles, they will lose one sanity per day. You can get wounded, poisoned, contract a fever, or a rash. Fortunately, you can take mushrooms to heal and even prepare a special Ayahuasca potion that will upgrade your skills.

Image source: Kickstarter campaign

The camp is discovered during the first scenario. The overall map of the jungle persists over different scenarios, so that it will grow as the campaign goes on, forcing you to explore further and further from the camp. You can save everything from one session to the next with the numbers on the map tiles that you can write down in your campaign journal. Character levels of stamina, hydration, energy, camp structures, and resources collected, all carry over in subsequent scenarios as well.

Green Hell prototype - Image source: game page on BGG

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