Henceforth (2016)

Henceforth is a cooperative, campaign-driven card game where you and your fellow players take on the roles of characters trying to survive after a deadly virus known as "Blue Ruin" wiped out 3/4 of the population, turning ordinary people into insane, howling monsters known colloquially as "Blues". While stand-alone rules exist, Henceforth is best played in a campaign format which can take place up to (and sometimes over) 15 game sessions or “stays.” Over the course of these stays players will earn experience to exchange for new skills and discover useful gear and weapons to aid them as they begin to unravel the game’s overarching mystery.

Each stay sees your characters holing up in a somewhat safe location lovingly dubbed the “home base.” Here your characters will spend action points to attack the Blues, build defenses, search for supplies, and more.

A stay ends when there are either no characters left to take actions, either because they have all evacuated or (worse) been killed, or a story trigger occurs. Story triggers are special events tied to the game’s campaign adventure book. This book consists of a series of scenarios which will help guide your characters to their next point in the campaign, eventually leading the group to one of Henceforth: The Living and the Dead’s many story endings.

The game is driven by an element of push-your-luck that greatly rewards players that take risks but can seriously endanger the entire group if those same risk-takers get too greedy (or desperate). It is very easy to draw attention to your home base in Henceforth; one wrong move, and a herd of insane, blue-skinned monsters will quickly surround your characters making it impossible to escape unscathed.

Warning: Henceforth is excruciatingly unforgiving.

For starters, each character only has six hit points. With each point of damage your character takes, the chances of that character suffering a long-term injury increases. Next, food and ammunition are both extremely limited and only become harder to find the longer you all stay in one place. So you gotta keep moving. Finally, you must keep track of your character’s sanity in the game as suffering too much or seeing too many horrible things can drive them mad, making them easy targets for the blues.