Draw the deity to your world!
The Cosmoctopus is watching you from the celestial expanses! Use the power of strange artifacts to understand the nature of the cosmic cephalopod. Prove your supremacy among the servants of the Great Inkling by performing the ritual of summoning the Cosmoctopus!
This is a dynamic and diverse game with the mechanics of building a card engine, in which participants will travel through the expanses of space to lead an extraterrestrial deity to their world, one tentacle at a time, using the powerful effects of relics, sacred scriptures, constellations, and hallucinations.
Game features
- Building a route in the Ink dimension. The playing field «Space Sprout» consists of tiles in the form of various patterns that change the strategy of moving the Ink God between locations. The location where the Spacecraft stops during your turn will bring certain bonuses according to the symbols depicted on the tile, so skillfully travel through space to collect as many cards and resources as you need.
- Creating a card engine. There are four types of cards in the game, each of which not only has its own draw conditions, but also its own rules of interaction: constellations require collecting a combination of tokens of certain resources on them, relics have permanent effects that are triggered when certain conditions are met, manuscripts add discounts to the cost of certain effects and cards, and ghosts have a one-time powerful effect.
- Variety of possibilities. Combine card effects with tile bonuses, build the board differently from the previous game and add portal tiles to it to diversify the route construction, and perform a new ritual to summon the Cosmosprut. You can also speed up, ease or complicate the game, or add portals to the game to divide the Ink Dimension - all additional game features are described in the rules.
- Cooperative and solo modes. The game rules also include conditions for involving the «Private Detective» in the game - a non-player character that one player or team of participants must outrun.
Game progress
To win, you must collect eight tentacles of the Great Inkwell before the rest of the participants, which can be obtained thanks to card effects.
On your turn, the player must:
- Move the Space Sprut figure and get a bonus tile on which it stops. The first step is free, but for each additional step you will have to discard 1 resource token, but the effects on the tiles are worth it!
- Play a card, paying its cost. Each card requires a type of resource that corresponds to its color.
There are four types of resources and four types of cards in the game:
- Manuscripts (black, require ink). Have permanent effects after drawing - provide a discount on the corresponding number of resources. Some manuscript cards also have the effect of «Absorption», which is a one-time effect and takes effect immediately after drawing the card: discard all manuscript and relic cards from the row and move the Cosmosprut the corresponding number of steps, receiving the reward of each tile.
- Relics (yellow, require coins). Have permanent effects with an activation condition, and usually bring additional resources. For example, the relic «Ancient Astrolabe» will earn you three stars every time you get a tentacle.
- Ghosts (red, require rumors). Have instant effects, and immediately after using the property of played ghost cards, they must be sent to the discard pile. Ghost cards with a lightning symbol can be played together with another card of the same turn, as long as you have enough resources.
- Constellations (dark colored, require stars). The card will lie in your play area until you collect the required number of resources depicted on it. Immediately afterwards, the card will grant you a tentacle and an instant powerful effect, and then go to reset.
- Reset resource tokens to the limit: at the same time, at the beginning of the turn, you must have at most 8 tokens of each of the four types.
However, if at the end of the turn you have at least 13 resources of one type (ink, coins, rumors or stars), you can immediately get one of the Forbidden Knowledge tokens, which will give you a discount on playing cards of the corresponding color.
In addition, the first player to receive the Cosmosprut tentacle can choose and take one of the four First Contact cards, which have a cost of "0" - you can play such a card for free on your turn. The next player to receive the tentacle will choose from three cards, the next one from two, and so on.
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