Create Settlements, Become King of the Valley, and Use Mindbugs to Take Control of Battle

You are the leader of settlers who have discovered new lands. Using powerful artifacts, you will explore terrains, hunt monsters, construct buildings, and create outposts. Collect diamonds and gold and welcome mighty heroes to make your settlement the most famous one!

In more detail, in Settlement you need to effectively manage settlers and resources. The goal of the game is to score as many victory points as possible by the end of the last round. Each round, players take turns in clockwise order, beginning with the starting player. On your turn, you can invite a hero or use one of your settlers to take one of these seven actions:

1. Construct a building
2. Explore a terrain
3. Hunt a monster
4. Build an outpost
5. Activate a region
6. Activate a street
7. Activate an outpost


On your turn, if you have the required resources, you may spend them to invite a hero in your settlement. Heroes are useful because they bring you victory points. Sometimes, a hero's score depends on your buildings, terrains, or outposts; some heroes also provide you with extra settlers. You may pass immediately after playing your turn if you're ready to end the current round. If you cannot do anything on your turn, then you must pass. Take a new artifact among the available ones, then return your previous artifact. Once all players have passed, the round ends.

At the end of the sixth round, the game ends, and you sum points from your hero cards and buildings. The player with the most victory points wins, and their settlement becomes the main outpost of the land!

A long time ago in a land far, far away, there was a thriving valley with various inhabitants. They wandered aimlessly in need of a true leader to guide them. Are you the king who will lead them the way? Do you have a strategy to acquire their trust, and are you cunning enough to challenge other would-be kings? They cannot be trusted as they will do anything to claim the crown you deserve. No sacrifice is too big or small for them. They may think being king is as easy as summoning subjects to their side, squeezing the gold from their pockets through taxes, and arranging some marriages, but only a true king will be able to keep up the morale and lead the inhabitants through the chaos of the ever-changing circumstances in the valley and the hills.


In King of the Valley, you must obtain the highest reputation of all the kingly contenders, with reputation being determined by influence, bonuses, and gold. To set up, lay out 25 of the character tiles from age I in a 5x5 grid, with each king starting on a different tile and with 2 gold in their reserve.

On a turn, you can first choose to acquire a tile from the "hill" for the listed gold price; the hill has two columns of six characters, with the characters costing 2-10 gold based on their height on the hill. When you acquire a tile, add it to your personal castle board. Characters have 0-5 influence, with the 1-5 influence characters being sorted by type and with the 0-value jester standing in for a character of your choice (but still being worth 0 influence). You then move your king orthogonally or diagonally, stopping on the character tile you want to claim; alternatively, you can move across 2-3 identical characters in a line, stopping on the space after them in order to collect them all! Add these character tile(s) to your castle board, and if you now have face-up characters with influence from 1-5, you can turn them face down to claim a kingdom bonus of points and coins.

To end your turn, refill empty spaces in the grid by choosing one column of the hill, then drawing characters from it as needed to fill empty spaces. Finally, draw character tiles from the stack to refill the hill, thereby giving everyone a glimpse at what can come on the playing area in the future, not to mention what can be acquired if you have enough coins in hand.


Specialist characters show up on the board — the priest, the wizard, and the tax collector — with you receiving immediate bonus actions should you collect them.

When the hill can't be fill completely, the game ends. All characters in your collection add their influence points to your score. Collecting 3-5 knights in the same order grants you bonus points, as does each pairing of a farmer with a farmer's wife. Add any kingdom bonuses to your sum, then whoever has the highest reputation wins.

In Mindbug, you summon hybrid creatures and send them to battle against your opponent — but when you summon a creature, the opponent may use one of their Mindbugs to take control of it. Outwit your opponent in a fascinating tactical duel in which having the best cards and playing them at the wrong time can be deadly for yourself.


Cards in Mindbug represent weird creatures that all come with unique and powerful abilities such as a Compost Dragon, a Snail Hydra, or a Kangasaurus Rex. Each player starts the game with ten creature cards (five in hand and five in a draw pile) and tries to use them to reduce the opponent's life total to zero. In addition, every player receives two Mindbug cards that can be used to mind control an opposing creature when it is played. This innovative mechanism is the core of the game and leads to a unique decision-making process that makes Mindbug feel utterly different from any other card game.

Playing a card doesn't require any resources in Mindbug. As a result, the game has no ramp-up phase (such as gathering resources) and doesn't require weak cards. Since there is also no deck-building, you can start playing right away from a single deck. There is also no unfair advantage as players draw cards from the same deck and always get the chance to mind control the strongest opposing cards. In the end, it all comes down to your own decisions, making the game extremely fair and competitive at the same time.