Cutthroat Caverns

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Cutthroat Caverns official rules >in English

About this board game

Cutthroat Caverns is a 3–6-player board game that plays in about 90 minutes, combining cooperative survival with opportunistic betrayal across nine encounters.

Each round presents a random encounter. When a monster appears, it carries a prestige value from 1 to 6. Players must work together to survive the threat, while maneuvering for the chance to land the decisive killing blow.

The player who successfully delivers that final blow claims the encounter’s prestige. This creates a tense struggle over who benefits from the group’s efforts: cooperation may be essential, but the rewards go to the player who seizes the right moment.

• Play through 9 rounds of random encounters
• Face monsters worth 1–6 prestige
• Compete to land the killing blow
• Survive together while pursuing individual victory

Not every encounter features a specific monster. Some challenges, such as a trap room that the heroes must pass through, offer no prestige at all. These encounters still form part of the dangerous journey through the caverns and test whether the group can make it to the end.

After all nine encounters, the surviving player with the most prestige wins. However, survival comes first: if the players fail to endure all nine encounters, nobody wins.

That balance gives Cutthroat Caverns its distinctive character. Players need one another to stay alive, yet every successful fight can become an opportunity to get ahead. Released in 2007, it is a game of shared danger, calculated positioning, and backstabbing at exactly the right time.