Clear the Dungeon
Clear the Dungeon Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Game Overview
Game Objective: Destroy all of the dungeon monsters to win the game.
Players: 1 Player
Materials: 54 card deck (Ace - King, two Jokers)
Ranking: (low) Ace - King (high), Jokers are wild
Setup
Separate all of the face cards (J's, Q's, & K's) from the deck. These twelve cards are used to form the dungeon monster deck. The rest of the cards (A-10, jokers) make up your power deck. Shuffle the dungeon monster deck and deal out four columns face down with three cards in each column. Flip the top most card of each column over to reveal the first set of monsters. Shuffle the power deck and place it face down in front of you.
Play
Each turn has three phases: draw, attack, & discard.
Draw
Draw three cards from the power deck. These three cards make up your hand. Each card will have to be played or discarded before drawing again.
Attack
Each monster type has a different power level: jacks 11, queens 12, and kings 13.
Decide how you want to play your cards. Place them on the monsters you wish to attack.
Three cards must be used to defeat a dungeon monster. Added together, the first two cards must be equal to or more than the monster's power level. Suit does not matter. The third card, called the trigger card, is used to finish the attack, and it must match the monster's suit. Rank does not matter.
A monster is immediately defeated once the third card is played. Remove the defeated monster with the attack cards and place them in your clear pile. Reveal the next uncovered monster.
For example, if you are attacking a jack of hearts, your first two attack cards must add up to 11 or more. In order to defeat the monster, your third attack card must be a heart of any rank. Once the heart card is played, the monster is defeated.
Jokers
Jokers can be used as an attack card or as a trigger. They are worth a power of 10, and they may be any suit needed.
Damage Bar
Any cards that cannot be played (or that you choose not to play) must be discarded prior to drawing your next three card hand. These discards form your damage bar. If your damage bar contains seven cards, you lose. The game ends immediately.
Win
If you defeat all of the monsters before running out of cards in the power deck, you win the game.
Score
The number of cards remaining in your power deck is your score. Cards remaining in your hand do not count toward your score.
Variations
Try these different ways to play Clear the Dungeon.
Boomer-Ace
With this rule, Aces are worth 11. If an Ace is used as a trigger card, it returns to your hand (like a boomerang).
Power Reserve
At the beginning of your first turn, draw five cards rather than three. From those five, choose two to place aside as your power reserve. The cards in your reserve are face up, and you may use them at any time as attack cards or trigger cards. You cannot refill your power reserve. Once the two cards are gone, they are gone! Each power reserve card remaining after winning the game are worth one point toward your score.
Special Abilities
Defeated kings give you special abilities. Form an inventory row with defeated kings face up. The K♥ allows you to place one card from your hand at the bottom of your power deck. The K♦ allows you to look at the bottom card of your power deck and move it to the top if you wish. The K♠ allows you to double the value of an attack card. The K♣ allows you to immediately draw a card from the power deck.
Once a king item card has been used, it is immediately discarded with the destroyed monster and all cards used for the attack.
Different Dungeon Layouts
Each [X] represents a card that is face down. Each row of cards should partially overlap the row above it. Monster cards are revealed as soon as they are uncovered.
Layouts (rows listed top to bottom; the printed diagrams show five layouts side by side, the first labelled Beginner and the last Extreme):
- Beginner: three rows of four cards ([X] [X] [X] [X]).
- Second layout: four rows of three cards.
- Third layout: rows of 2, 3, 3, 4 ([X] [X] / [X] [X] [X] / [X] [X] [X] / [X] [X] [X] [X]).
- Fourth layout: rows of 2, 2, 3, 2, 3 ([X] [X] / [X] [X] / [X] [X] [X] / [X] [X] / [X] [X] [X]).
- Extreme: rows of 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 ([X] / [X] [X] / [X] [X] [X] / [X] / [X] [X] / [X] [X] [X]).
Note: the layout rows above are a text rendering of the printed diagram; the exact overlap arrangement is shown only graphically in the original.