Crawling to the Brink

About the Game

The event occurred the moment 2023 began. Twenty-five people dropped to the floor simultaneously. Every two weeks, to the second, one would awaken just to die. This happened until, on April 30th, the cycle was broken. One awoke and spoke —"I've seen our end"— before passing away. 

As the Senior Prophecy Analyst at The Observatory, you planned to help guide humanity to a bright future, but you never expected to be thrust into desperately working to SAVE it. Using the Oracles you invented —devices created to crawl through memories and subconscious thoughts to harvest prophetic imagery— you'll need to cautiously but quickly race through the memories of the remaining sixteen before it's too late.

How to Play

Crawling to the Brink tasks you and, potentially, one additional Senior Prophecy Analyst (why are there even two SENIOR Prophecy Analysts when there's no one else in your department??? That's above your paygrade I guess...) with competing to construct enough visions to see the End.

Using a standard deck of cards, twelve dice, and some tokens (Diviners), you'll push your luck by moving your Diviners along the spaces on the cards themselves. Reach the end space without going past it and you'll construct the vision, taking the card for yourself. The first to a total of 30 wins! But beware: if your Diviner is on a card when another player constructs the vision, or if you accidentally move past that final space, you may just lose one of your (very limited quantity) Diviners...

You’ll Need…

• 20 (10 each in 2 different colors) pawns: anything small enough to fit on the suit symbols of playing cards.
• A standard deck of cards, but only the 3s, 5s, 7s, and 9s are used. (Jokers too if you have them)
• 12 dice (4 each in 3 different colors)

And it’s suggested that you also have:

• Something to roll the dice in
• Two objects (anything at all) of the same color as two of the three sets of dice (used as reminders); I used d20s when we played (as pictured below)

About the Files

There are four files, but you can just choose one, and you don’t need to print it. You can get them right here, from Google Drive, or from Itch; they’re free regardless of location:

• Rules: These contain the rules! Individual Pages is made for reading on a device, Booklet is for printing and folding so you have a booklet instead of a stack of papers!
• Story: This is a short story I wrote about the game. It sets the scene and helped me with theming it. It’s unnecessary but I enjoyed writing it, and I hope you enjoy reading it! 🥳 It also comes in either Individual Pages or Booklet form.

Did you know we have a Patreon?

You can read more about Crawling to the Brink there.

The vast majority of our posts are free: we share news, updates, behind-the-scenes design stuff, and more. We do have paid tiers that get access to our stuff as it releases, but even becoming a free member will get you emails when one of our free posts goes out. And psssst: sometimes we even release free stuff!

More Standard Deck Games

Check out all of our Standard Deck games in this list, and my other Ludum Dare entry games below