Stay Away!

About this board game

Stay Away! is a hidden-identity survival game for 4–12 players, with each game lasting about 60 minutes. On the risen island of R’lyeh, a rescue team searching for missing archaeologists discovers a horrifying creature awakened from an eternal slumber.

Known as The Thing, this creature can possess a human body, clone it, and take its place. At the beginning, players do not know who The Thing is—or when another player may become infected. Everyone must watch the group carefully while trying to determine whom they can trust.

The archaeologists’ goal is to work together, identify The Thing, and destroy it with a Flamethrower card. Yet cooperation is difficult when every exchange could change the balance of power. A player remains Human until The Thing passes an “Infected!” card to them during a card exchange.

• Humans: Search for The Thing and try to roast it with a Flamethrower card.
• Infected players: Become allies of The Thing and help conceal its identity.
• The Thing: Avoids discovery while spreading infection through the team.

Use intuition, nerves of steel, and clever acting to survive the expedition. You may block doors, quarantine a suspect, reveal your identity to an ally, grab a flamethrower, or run away—but danger may be closer than expected.

With mistrust at the heart of every decision, Stay Away! creates a tense contest of deduction, deception, and shifting loyalties for groups looking for an unsettling team-versus-creature experience.