perform actions inside.

If you loot some

Card Crawler
A solitaire dungeon crawling and deck-building game
treasure/weapon from the room, trigger a
spell, or kill a monster without looting its
body: turn the room card by 90 degrees. It is
now Empty and cannot be looted again. You
Number of players: 1 Game duration: 5-10 min may of course still travel through.

Card values
Objective Numbered cards are interpreted differently if they are
Your land is under attack by monsters, lead by the in the fortress or in your hand.
Dark Lord and his four Knights. They hide in the In the fortress, cards are defined by their suite.
shadows of the Cursed Fortress, not so far from your Diamonds are Treasures, Clubs are Weapons/Armor,
village. Several attempts have been made to stop this and Spades are Monsters. In your hand, these cards
evil, but none of the brave adventurers ever returned... represent action points.
It is now your turn to attempt the impossible. Go forth At the end of the game, Diamonds cards in your deck
and slay the Dark Lord! count as victory points.

Numbers on the Spades cards represent the monsters

Setup power. When you reveal a monster with a power P, it
‒ Use a standard deck of 52 playing cards and has an attack/defense of P/2P. For instance the 6 of
one joker. Spades is a 6/12 monster.
‒ Pull out the 1-10 of Hearts and stack them in
order, face up with the 10 on top. This is your Black Joker is the Dark Lord of the Fortress. He has a
Life Deck. power of 15 (attack/defense = 15/30).
‒ Shuffle the 1-6 of Clubs, Diamonds, Spades
and place this deck face down. These are your Kings are the four Knights. They have a power of 10
actions/inventory. (attack/defense = 10/20). Once looted, Kings can be
‒ Shuffle the remaining 25 cards and deal them discarded for movement, but do NOT count as
face down in a 5×5 grid. Keep some space to attack/defense cards.
allow the cards to rotate by 90 degrees. This is
the Fortress. Queens are companions who will help you in your
‒ Draw the first 5 cards from the deck, this is quest. You get 5 additional victory points per
your hand. collected Queen still with you at the end of the game.
‒ Use any kind of token to represent where your Q of Diamonds, Clubs, and Spades are placed next to
Hero is located. Place it anywhere near a card your Life deck when collected. Q of Hearts goes to
on the outer rim of the 5×5 area. This is the your discard pile.
entrance of the fortress.
• Q_Hearts "The Healer" is played from your
Vocabulary hand, either as a normal action card, or to heal
1 wound up to 10 HP max.
‒ Discard: place card face up next to your deck. • Q_Diamonds "The Strong One" limits your
It will be reshuffled when your draw pile is exhaustion. See "End of Turn" for details.
empty. • Q_Clubs "A Helpful Hand" gives you one
‒ Trash: remove card completely from the more action per turn by extending the size of
game. your hand to 6 cards.
‒ Unknown/Revealed/Empty: A room has three • Q_Spades "The Fighter" helps you fighting.
states. At the beginning all rooms are Trash it to double your attack/defense points
Unknown (face down). When you enter a this turn.
room, it is Revealed (face up) and you can

Copyright © 2016 Jean-Baptiste Vincent All Rights Reserved – rules updated on 2016-01-26 Page 1 of 2
Jacks are events happening in the room they are wounds equal to the difference monster attack minus
found in. They can be good (red) or bad (black). They player defense. Alive monsters are back at full health
are activated the first time a hero enters their room. in the next turn.
After activation the room is marked as Empty (rotate
the Jack 90 degrees). - Heal a wound: Trash a card to heal one wound.
Note that you heal a maximum of one wound per
• J_Hearts heals one wound up to 10 HP max. card, regardless of the card value. Use the Hearts
• J_Diamonds reveals all adjacent rooms. cards to keep track of your wounds.
• J_Spades deals one wound. Can be prevented
by trashing one card. - Loot: Place the room card into your discard pile and
• J_Clubs reveals all adjacent rooms in the order replace it with one from your hand, rotated by 90
North-East-South-West. In addition, the first degrees. The room has been looted and is now Empty.
Monster newly revealed this way attacks the
player (ranged attack). Dead monsters not collected as Loot while you are in
the room cannot be picked up later. Mark the room as
Game play Empty by rotating the card in-place by 90 degrees.
Each turn has 2 phases: End of Turn
1. Action: Take as many actions as you want/can.
2. End of turn: Draw cards to refill your hand to a As you progress in the game, the deck represents your
maximum of 5 (6 if you have collected Q_Clubs). experience and exhaustion. You improve it by
replacing cards with better ones. At the end of your
Action turn, you must draw cards to refill your hand to a
maximum of 5 (6 if you have collected Q_Clubs). If
Most actions require that you discard a card from there are no cards available, shuffle your discard pile
your hand. Therefore the size of your hand limits the and reuse it as a new deck. Every time you do this,
number of actions you can take each turn. You do not you suffer two wounds (one if you have collected
have to use all your actions each turn. Unused cards Q_Diamonds).
remain in your hand for the next turn. You can
perform four types of actions:
End of Game
- Explore: If your current location does not contain a The game ends with your death, or after you have
monster, you may discard one card to enter to move killed the Dark Lord AND collected his body. If you
to an adjacent room (cardinal directions). If the room slay him but do not have an action card to collect his
contains a monster, you may trash one card AND take body, he will come back to life at the next turn.
one wound of damage to move back to an adjacent If you win you can see how well you performed by
Revealed/Empty room. If this was the first room you counting all victory points in your deck, hand, discard
ever entered, you are allowed to use this rule to exit pile plus the Queens you have collected and your life
the fortress and try another entrance. This is the only points.
case when exiting the fortress is allowed. Cards on the board do not count as Victory Points.

- Attack a monster: To defeat it you must inflict Maximum number of points = 200
damage greater than the monster's defense. Your ‒ Black Joker = 30
damage is the sum of the values of the action cards ‒ Kings 4×20 = 80
you discard for this fight. If the room contains a ‒ Queens 4×5 = 20
monster and you did not kill it, it will automatically ‒ All Diamonds = 55
attack you with its power. You cannot flee from this ‒ Your life (max 10) = 10
attack until next turn. You may discard action cards ‒ No trashed cards + 5 bonus
and use their value as defense. If the monster power
exceeds the power of your defense, you suffer

Copyright © 2016 Jean-Baptiste Vincent All Rights Reserved – rules updated on 2016-01-26 Page 2 of 2