How To Win

An all-around guide to how the game works and how to annoy your friends with the serious loopholes in the game's design!

What is this game? How Is It Played?

This is a Freemium Party Game that was adapted from a card game 1:1; all of the rules are direct from the board game edition; glitches and all. In this Clue/Amogus hybrid you walk around the mansion looking at hidden cards in rooms in order to arm yourself and figure out what kind of monster you are dealing with.

Most of the players will be a regular human hunter. You start with random cards as well as your standard cards, which for lack of a better word do not count towards your hand size. Brawl is your last ditch weapon, should you need it. I have seen plenty of people do serious damage just chasing somebody and Brawling them.

At the beginning of the game, two of the monster cards are dealt to one player in secret. The other monster cards are somewhere in the house; these CANNOT be picked up or manipulated and serve only to tell you what you are *not* looking for. Players can attack each-other with weapon cards after a few rounds have passed, and whoever kills the monster wins. Human players don't get eliminated, but crippled, if you "overkill" a player they get revealed as crippled to everybody. So the monster is trying to do exact damage to humans in order to hide their victims.

Theoretically, the monster can win too but it's more than slightly difficult. There are several methods a player can use to determine if a player is a human or not, so many that it's very hard to act in the shadows for long. Secondly, for the most part the monster cards are actually not very good compared to a single human wielding the "right" tool for the job. Even the strongest monster attack, Bite, has its limits in damage output. In fact, your best weapon as a monster in a live game is to pretend like you are playing Amogus/Werewolf and sow chaos/mistrust! Players tend to start swinging at eachother quickly, and every human that gets crippled is one you don't have to deal with.

You have both Green Stamina Points and Blue Action Points. Your Stamina recharges whenever you stay still in one room and perform no aggressive actions. You can only look through cards and use the Spy card, otherwise you won't get your Stamina back that turn. A good opening strategy is to burn both your stamina to sprint to a room full of cards, then just spend the next turn going through item cards.

Being a Human and why it's OP

The main difference between being a Human and the Monster is that you can be crippled, and have significantly lower health than the monster. Crippled players cannot move as far, and can only accept a 1-3 as a card action result. This means many stronger weapons cannot be used by a crippled human effectively, but still leaves plenty of dangerous weapons in their hands. Note that merely having no health makes you a cripple, not being revealed as one after being "overkilled"

Determining if a player is a fellow human is easy. Every player starts with two cards, it's possible to spy or snatch enough cards from a player to determine if they are holding any monster cards. The strongest items pull *random* cards from their hand, preventing the monster from purposefully hiding their cards. Note that items that steal cards give you the option to return cards, but you can also just be a troll and drop them all at their feet.

Where things get tricky is figuring out *what kind* of monster you are dealing with. While you may be tempted to share intelligence about the monster, only the player that deals the striking blow wins. Some weapons, like the shotgun and rifle, hurt everything pretty consistently. but it's usually smarter to figure out what kind of monster you are dealing with by snatch/spying, since you might have to travel more than half the house to find the monster cards. The "right" weapons for the monster will delete them in 1-2 turns.

There are a few items, such as the overpowered Shadow Bead and Shadow Crystal, that just outright tell a player if you are a monster and what type you are. In addition, there are many weapon cards that will only make you give a player a card IF they are the monster.

Being a Monster

You will lose.

I have played 30+ games of Hunt with other players, and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that Monsters lose most of the time. This is because of a classic turn based issue: The Action Economy. Your cards are NOT strong enough to directly take on groups of players. Players tend to shout out in alarm when attacked by a monster card, meaning you basically can't use them until they have already identified you as the monster. Secondly, the anti-monster cards are E X T R E M E L Y overpowered, while Monster cards are pretty lackluster in comparison.

This means you will have to use item cards to attack and defend yourself, at least at first. When play starts you are dealt two random powers, which collectively determine what Monster you are. Your very first goal is to get two other cards in your hand as fast as possible before the spy/snatch spam begins.

What you are hoping for is other players to incite violence with each-other. Every point of damage they do is one you don't have to inflict. The *best* case scenario is for a player to accuse another for no reason and start attacking them lethally. If you can manage to sow a little dissent yourself, it'll help thin the herd.

Your goal is to Cripple every hunter so that you can escape! A player counts as Crippled when they have been reduced to 0 HP, NOT when they are hit after reaching 0 HP as this tags them as crippled for everybody to see. When dealing with a single hunter in the room, your goal is to cripple them and disengage ASAP before everybody else comes running; everybody typically does when a fight starts.

Start using the monster cards when you're the final few, cards like Tireless and Bite are very good at mopping up the last one or two players.



Monster Tips

• Using Tireless reveals what you are on the monster tracker. A newbie mistake I see a lot is monsters using Tireless on their first turn without realizing they gave themselves away.
  
• Don't get into long fights or you will get outnumbered
  
• Players will almost always tell the others if you use a monster card, so save them for the later part of the round.
  
• You need the other players to make gigantic, grievous mistakes in order for you to win

Final Thoughts

This is a fun game to bust out with friends, it has a good "Combat Clue" feel to it. Where the game falls apart if the Monster balance, the extra hitpoints are just not enough to scale with more players; the action economy just makes it way too difficult. In one turn you can attack 4-6~ times, you will then be attacked 20+ times by the other players.

By allowing us to set certain home rules or banning cards, the monster would have a better chance. They should of also took a note from other scalable difficulty games by including stronger versions of the monster cards for 5-6 player games.

That being said, I wish this game had more players and I hope this guide inspires more groups to do so.