Critters Below

Critters Below Rulebook

Table of Contents

The Goal of the Game
Components
Setup
Game Rounds
Player Actions
Turn Structure
List of Symbols
Condition & Health
Damage & Death
Event Cards
Event Packs
Current Situation & Going Out
Victory
Changing the Difficulty
Hardcore Co-op Ruleset
Last Man Standing Ruleset
FAQ

The Goal of the Game

Each player plays as a Critter taking shelter in the bunker. Players take turns and perform various Actions underground. Critters Below is a semi-cooperative game. Players can and should work together, but each player's main goal is their own survival.

At the end of each round, each player can individually decide whether to open the bunker doors and go out, or stay underground. The game is over when a player goes out and the war is over; or when all players die.

Components

6 Character Cards
41 Item Cards
3 Facility Cards
116 Condition Cards
12 Event Cards
6 Cheat Sheets
English Rulebook
Cloth Card Case
Wooden Current Round Marker

Additional Special Edition Content (Green Can):

Special Edition Card Pack (16 Cards)

Additional Collector's Edition Content (Red Can):

6 Textile Player Mats
+1 Cloth Card Case
1 Metal Current Round Marker (instead of the wooden marker)

Note: Player mats are not essential for gameplay. These components are part of the Red Can.

Setup

Setup Storage Deck & Discard Pile

Shuffle the Item Cards to create the Storage Deck according to the table below. The rest of these cards go to the Discard Pile. Place the Discard Pile face up on the table.

Number of players	1	2	3	4	5	6
Number of Item Cards in play	10	15	20	25	30	35

The Storage Deck represents the Items the players have inside the bunker. The Discard Pile is the place of used items, but players are able to draw random cards back from the Discard Pile by crafting or going outside (See: List of Symbols/Supply Drop).

Setup the Shelf

Deal 4 cards from the Storage Deck face down to the center of the table to fill up the Shelf at the beginning of the game.

The Shelf is a common area filled with Item Cards. It is dark in the shelter: Item Cards on the Shelf are kept face down unless instructed otherwise. On the Shelf, you can only see the cards by looking at them with cards having the "Look at cards" symbol (e.g.: Lantern, Generator) or by playing them (potentially without knowing their contents).

Setup Facilities

Place the Storage Room (white), Generator (red) and Infirmary (blue) face up with their 'half opened' side. (In case you have more Facility cards, you may use more in addition to these. We recommend using one or two more.)

Facility Cards grant players basic actions. The Storage Room brings new Item Cards from the Storage Deck to the Shelf. With the Generator, players can Look at Cards. The Infirmary helps you stay healthy.

Setup Condition Cards

Separate the Condition Cards face up into six piles: Vigor, Starvation, Bleeding, Poisoning, Radiation and Regeneration.

As their health condition changes, players will either draw cards from these piles, or return the discarded Condition Cards. Drawing good cards or discarding bad cards is good. Drawing bad cards, or discarding good cards is bad.

Setup Players

For each player:

Give each player one Character Card, either randomly, or by their choice (set aside the rest).
Deal each player 2 Item Cards from the Storage Deck. This is their starting Pocket.
Deal 2 Vigor Cards to each player's hand. This is their starting hand of Condition Cards.
Shuffle 2 Bleeding, 2 Poisoning and 2 Radiation Cards and deal 1 randomly to each player. Put this card face up in front of them. This is their starting Damage.
Choose the first player randomly.

Your Pocket is your private stash of items. You may look at cards in your Pocket at any time, but you can only add cards to your Pocket after you used them with the "Look at cards" symbol (e.g.: Lantern, Generator Room).

Your hand of various Condition Cards represents your complex health status. It may contain helpful or harmful cards. Face up Condition Cards in front of you are called Damages. If you have 3 Damages, then you are dead (See: Condition & Health).

Setup Events

Shuffle the Event Cards and line them up. (See illustration below: 4 cards with 3 planes, 2 cards with 2 planes and 4 cards with 1 plane). The third card from the left will be the Event Card for the first round. Place the Current Round Marker on it.

Each Event Card represents one day which is one round in the game. Each day, something will fall from the sky: either bombs or supply crates. The players can leave the bunker to get Supply Drops and to win the game. For the latter to happen, they have to look for a relatively peaceful day to go outside (See: Current Situation & Going Out).

Game Rounds

During a round, players take turns starting with the first player. In your turn, you may perform a maximum of 3 Actions, and you have to perform at least 1.

Players may do other things that are not considered Actions (e.g.: move Item Cards, look at Item Cards in their Pocket, look at their hand of Condition Cards).

At the end of your turn, the next player has to randomly flip a Condition Card from your hand to see how your health is changing (See: Condition & Health).

At the end of the round, players may individually decide whether to leave the bunker or not, attempting to win or staying underground (See: Current Situation & Going Out).

Player Actions

You can perform an Action by doing one of the following:

Flip a face down Item Card on the Shelf or in your Pocket and execute the effect. Discard this card. (You may use multiple Item Cards in your turn.)
Use a Facility Card. (You may use multiple Facility Cards in your turn, all of them can be used once per turn).
Use your Character Ability (once per turn).

When executing the effects of a card, follow the instruction symbols from left to right (See: List of Symbols).

Turn Structure

At any time, you may... (perform any or all of the following in any order)

Look at Item Cards in your Pocket.
Move an Item Card from your Pocket to the Shelf.

During your turn, you may... (perform any or all of the following in any order)

Perform 1-3 Actions (See: Player Actions).
Move Item Cards from the Shelf to the bottom of the Storage Deck.

At the end of your turn, you have to... (perform all of the following in this order)

Move surplus Item Cards from your Pocket. If you have more than 2 Item Cards, you have to move the surplus to the Shelf.
Shuffle your Condition Cards and have the next player select one randomly. Execute its effect. (See: Condition & Health)
Check if you have more than 10 Condition Cards, if so, randomly discard down to 10.

At the end of the round, you have to... (perform all of the following in this order)

Decide whether you want to go out or not. Each player has to show thumbs up if they want to go out or thumbs down to stay.
Flip the current round's Event and all previous Event Cards, if at least one player decides to go out and resolve the last three. (See: Current Situation & Going Out)
Place the Current Round Marker on the next Event Card.

List of Symbols

Gain/Lose Condition Cards (+1 / -1)

Gain/lose the indicated amount of Condition Cards of a specific type to/from your hand.

Choose Target

Choose any other Critter as a target. Apply all symbols following the Choose Target symbol on this target instead of you. Effects are not optional.

Regenerate Damage (1)

Discard the indicated number of Damage of the specific type shown from in front of you.

Restock Shelf (4)

If there are less Item Cards on the Shelf than the indicated number: draw cards from the Storage Deck, placing them face down on the Shelf, until there is the indicated number of cards on the Shelf.

Look at Cards (5)

Privately look at the indicated number of face down Item Cards on the Shelf. You may put them into your Pocket. (You may pick them all up and organize them as you like. Looking at cards doesn't activate them.)

Upgrade

Turn a Facility card from the half opened side to its opened side. From now on, players may use the upgraded room.

Shuffle Shelf

Shuffle all Item Cards on the Shelf.

Detect (0)

If 0 is indicated by the symbol, flip the current Event Card. If -1 is indicated, flip the previous Event Card. If -2 is indicated, flip the second previous Event Card.

Empty Pocket

Place all Item Cards currently in your Pocket and also your Wearable Item (if you are wearing something) on the Shelf face down.

Supply Drop (1)

Shuffle the Discard Pile. Draw the indicated number of cards from there, and put them in your Pocket.

Wearable Item

The symbols following the Wearable Item symbol on this card are constantly in effect. You may have only one Wearable Item. You may return or replace it. Keep this card face up.

Protect Against Event Effects

This symbol is found on Wearable Items. It prevents you from gaining Condition Cards from all the effects of a certain type of bombing.

Condition & Health

Your hand of various Condition Cards represents your complex health status. It may contain helpful (Regeneration), neutral (Vigor), or harmful (Bleeding, Starvation, Radiation and Poisoning) cards. The more you have of one type in your hand, the higher the chances that you will suffer its effects. You may look at your hand of Condition Cards at any time.

At the end of your turn, you have to shuffle your Condition Cards and have the next player flip one randomly and execute the effect according to the table. This is the only way to gain Damage and it's not possible to gain more than one Damage per turn.

Flipped Condition Card	Effect
Bleeding, Starvation, Radiation or Poisoning card	Place the flipped card in front of you as Damage. Discard all cards of the same kind from your hand.
Vigor card	Discard all Vigor cards from your hand.
Regeneration card	Discard one Damage you have in front of you. Discard all Regeneration cards from your hand.

Damage & Death

Condition Cards in front of you represent the Damage you have suffered. The more you have, the closer you are to death. Curing Damage is very important.

If you would ever receive a 3rd Condition Card (of any kind) in front of you, then you are eliminated. Remove your Critter from play. You have lost the game.

Discard all of your Condition Cards.
Search the Discard Pile starting from the bottom for the first Can of Food of any kind (if any).
Shuffle this card with your Item Cards and Wearable Item (if any) and place them on top of the Storage Deck.

Most items in the game are exhausting to use and give you Starvation Cards. The more Actions you use the more hungry you'll get. Therefore it is not always worth using all three of your possible Actions and it is almost impossible to completely avoid getting Damage. Rather, focus on Damage regeneration.

Event Cards

There are 4 kinds of Event Cards and each as one represents one round of the game. They have 3 stripes:

On the current round's Event Card, the top stripe is active.
On the previous round's Event Card, the middle stripe is active.
On the Event Card from two rounds earlier, the bottom stripe is active.

The effect of Event Cards decreases over time. The same type of Event Cards always carry the same values (the Nuke is the most dangerous). Supply Drop Cards give more Item Cards during earlier phases, and none at the end.

The four kinds of Event Cards are: Nuke, Bombardment, Chemical Attack and Supply Drop.

Note: the per-stripe numeric values and icons printed on the Event Card faces are not reproduced in this text; they are shown only in the rulebook's illustrations. Refer to the printed cards.

Event Packs

There are 3 packs of event cards in the game (with 3, 2 and 1 planes, respectively). On their back, 4 symbols describe the cards in the pack.

For example, the first pack with 3 planes consists of 2 Nukes, 1 Chemical Attack and 1 Supply Drop.

Current Situation & Going Out

Whenever a player decides to go outside at the end of the round, players must reveal the current round's Event Card and all events before it. The Current Situation outside is indicated by the symbols corresponding to the arrow found on the last three Event Cards, as seen on the picture below. After revealing Event Cards, apply the effects of the Current Situation arrow to players who decided to go out.

Players cannot die immediately by going out, but they may gain several Condition Cards to their hand. Exploring Events can also benefit them with new Items and the chance of victory.

Victory

In case the Current Situation consists of less than 3 Condition Card penalties (the case on the image is one example of this), the players who decided to go out win the game and the game is over. Otherwise, continue the game.

Although Wearable Items may prevent some players from receiving Condition Cards, this does not affect victory conditions.

If nobody wins until the end of the last round, all players are dead and the game is over.

Changing the Difficulty

Add or remove 5 Cards to/from the Storage Deck to make the game easier or harder.
Start without starting Damage to make the game easier.
Add 1 or 2 more cards to the middle Event pack (2 planes) to make the game longer.

Hardcore Co-op Ruleset

The players are part of a special scientist team. Everybody's knowledge is essential to finish their super important science project after the war is over. If anyone dies, the project will fail.

If anyone dies in this game mode, all players lose and the game is over.
There is no fixed player order. The actual player names the next player. Once all players had their turns, the round is over.
Instead of individually deciding to go outside, players have to vote. If over 50% of votes are in favor, then all players go out, otherwise none.

Last Man Standing Ruleset

The players know that the war will not end anytime soon. Even if the air raids stop for a few days, they can't leave the bunker. The only thing that matters is to live as long as possible.

The only way to win the game is to be the last player alive. (The last round has to be finished if possible, so players can have a tie if they die in the same round.)
Instead of setting up Event Cards at the beginning of the game, shuffle all packs together and line them up randomly. Start with the 3rd Event Card.
Going outside from the bunker for loot is still possible. If the previous three Event Cards don't have a Supply Drop on them, players going outside still get one Supply Drop.
Add 5 less Cards to the Storage Deck than you would in a standard game.
The Pocket limit is decreased to 1 card for all characters. The Fox, Bat and Skunk starts without Item Cards, the rest of the Characters start with 2.
It is forbidden to put cards to the bottom of the Storage Deck.

FAQ

What is the direction of play? It is up to you.
What if the Storage Deck runs out? You run out of cards, so you should craft or scavenge new items. You may still put back Item Cards to the empty Storage Deck.
How many items can the Shelf hold? Although it can be refilled to up to 4 or 6 cards, the Shelf may hold any number of Item Cards.
What if a pile of Condition Cards has run out? You cannot gain more of that type. (When resolving an Event, distribute the remaining cards evenly: give each player the same number, and put back the remainder.)
How can some Items have bad effects, or purely bad effects? In this game, usually everything comes for a price. In some cases Items harm the player. Be careful of what you activate, use these to trick others.
How does the Cockroach's ability work? The Cockroach has to activate his ability as an action. Once it's activated he has permanent Radiation protection. He can also have only one Wearable Item, including his ability, so if he wants to have another Wearable Item, he can deactivate (but not lose) his Character card. Discarding his Pocket has no effect on his active ability.
How does the Gas Grenade work? Target a player. The targeted player Gains 3 Poisoning Condition Cards to her hand. The targeted player targets another player of her choice (maybe even the original player). The second target Gains 2 Poisoning Condition Cards to his hand.
Can I look at the cards in the Discard Pile? No. The top card is visible, and it may change with reshuffling, but don't peek any further!