PopHorror Let's Get Scared
You wake up alone with nothing but a candle and infinite darkness surrounding you. You have to find a way out… but there’s something moving just out of reach of your candle’s light.
The Night Cage is a cooperative board game for 1-5 players challenging you to escape the darkness before your candles burn out. The goal is simple: everyone must find a key, take it to the gate, and use them simultaneously to escape. To do this, however, the players must navigate an ever changing labyrinth of darkness with nothing but a candle. Deadly creatures called Wax Eaters, among others, stalk the labyrinth trying to snuff out the light to trap you in darkness forever.
The Night Cage is very simply designed, yet it’s beautiful, elegant, and easy to learn. The game’s only components are a double sided board with a grid, wooden candle figures to represent the players, and a stack of tiles that fit inside a cardboard candle.
What makes The Night Cage unique is that each player chooses where they start and can only see as far as their candle illuminates, which is one space in every direction. For each space seen, a tile is drawn from the stack representing the candle’s wax, illuminating your path one space at a time. Be weary, however, because as you move, the path behind you vanishes and will change if you go back. Once the wax runs out, you’re out of time and are trapped in the darkness forever as your candles flicker for the last time.
There are a number of keys and gates in the stack of tiles—as well as monsters that will cause you to lose tiles faster—taking away valuable time needed to escape. Players must work together and be mindful of each other’s positions as each one can only hold one key, and there are a limited number of keys and gates in the stack. EVERY player needs to reach the same gate with a key of their own, so letting a key slip away to darkness can be a critical mistake.
The Night Cage creates a constant state of tension as what lies just outside the light of your candle could be anything from a key to a monster waiting to attack. If you are attacked, your light goes out and you can no longer see more than the space you occupy until another player relights your candle with their own. An atmospheric way to represent this is by getting LED candles and playing the game in the dark or at low light. When your candle goes out in the game, switch off your LED candle.
The Night Cage is fun, atmospheric and easy to learn, but it can be brutally challenging at times. The game may only be movement-based on the surface, but it creates its own puzzles as you find yourself working together to illuminate the best paths and not lose keys or gates. Games take around fifteen to twenty minutes, and there are plenty of options and rules to adjust the difficulty. With it being unique and easy to learn, it’s a great game to bring out for almost anyone to play.
