Until Dawn and The Quarry inspired this print-and-play horror adventure game
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A new print-and-play board game takes inspiration from survival horror video games such as Until Dawn and The Quarry.
The Cottage is an upcoming board game that sees players attempting to survive the dangers found in Connieville, a seemingly harmless fishing village that hides a dark secret. Designed to be played over a series of sessions – which collectively add up to around eight to ten hours – The Cottage features a series of adventures for players to experience, taking them through the overall plot of the game which will be affected by their choices along the way.
A print-and-play tabletop game, meaning that players can print out all the required components for the game themselves, The Cottage takes inspiration from the likes of 2015’s Until Dawn – a horror video game developed by Supermassive Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment that has players exploring environments and making choices – and 2022’s The Quarry. Similarly to the aforementioned video games, The Cottage has players taking control of a cast of characters who must find their way out of a terrible situation by finding clues, surviving encounters and making decisions.
The village of Connieville has been haunted by rumours and stories of curses, which the player characters soon discover after arriving there. Players will be able to choose between a selection of different characters to control, from the intelligent student Melissa Owen to the shy and fearful Brandon Bailey. As these characters, players will explore the various locations found in Connieville for clues and leads in order to uncover its secrets and find a way to survive.
Each character in the co-op board game has their own base attributes that players will use whenever they must pass skill tests during the game. Players may be able to increase – or sometimes be forced to decrease – their character’s attributes by making certain decisions throughout The Cottage. How good a character is at a certain skill may determine whether they will survive certain encounters or progress in the story.
The horror board game features a storybook containing the narrative of the game, which players will read whenever prompted to by the game’s map. Each entry of the storybook will provide players with flavour text, objects they can take or interact with, characters they can talk to and general options for where to go and what to do next. As players progress through the game, they will mark certain boxes on their event track on their character sheets, before using these decisions to determine the outcome of certain events later on.
The Cottage was created by Dave Navarro, a visual board game designer and illustrator. The Kickstarter campaign for The Cottage is currently live until December 10th, with a pledge of €17 (£15) getting backers a copy of the print-and-play game in March 2023.