Mantis Falls (a game of trust)

Mantis Falls is a strategic and highly interactive 2-3 player hidden traitor game. As cautious companions, players must use cooperation, hand management, social deduction and deception to protect themselves, and each other, on a dark and perilous journey.

On the shadowy film-noir roads of a mob-ruled mountain town named Mantis Falls, you have witnessed something not meant for your eyes and must now move quickly to escape town alive. You are informed that another witness will join you, and you consider your greatest hope for survival will come if you can contend with the hazards of this night together. But with each damaging event and every fresh wound, your suspicions grow. Looking into your companion's eyes you wonder, perhaps too late, if this person is here to kill you.

By use of hidden role cards, Mantis Falls is a “sometimes cooperative" strategy game. A game may have only witnesses, in which case players can win only if they all escape together. Or there could secretly be an assassin, carefully protecting the illusion of collaboration until the right moment to strike.

Unlike semi-cooperative games with multi-tiered win objectives or accumulations of points, Mantis Falls presents a simplicity of purpose: survival. And this task presents challenge in equal and high measure for all players. When there are only witnesses, players will need to continually perform acts of sacrifice and generosity even as double-edged action cards and "unseen" events test the limits of their fragile alliance. Players charged with the role of assassin can survive only with deceit and cunning, always cautious of the powerful but fleeting ability of witnesses to call in a hit on those they no longer trust.

Mantis Falls combines combo-driven card-play and hand-building with player communication. On every turn, players discuss tactics, defend choices and bluff through carefully guarded secrets. Witnesses and assassins alike must walk the line between a willingness to help their companion and a readiness to kill, always reading each other as much as surveying the hazards of the road.

With a variable modular board and uncertain objectives, each walk through the roads of Mantis Falls is unique. Moreover, the level of interaction means the relationships and personalities of the players themselves have the power to meaningfully transform every game.

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