The Encroaching is a digital board game for 1–4 players where the city reveals itself one tile at a time, settling into patterns that don’t always feel right. Hidden roles and secret objectives keep intentions blurred, and the corruption threading through the streets punishes anyone who trusts too easily.
HIDDEN ROLES
Before the first round, each player is secretly assigned a role: Survivor or Antagonist. Everyone moves through the same city, uses the same items, and follows the same rules - which means the only way to tell who’s on your side is to pay attention to how they play.
Survivors work to complete the scenario’s objective.
Antagonists work to make sure they fail. Quietly, if they’re smart.
TURN STRUCTURE
Each round begins with an initiative draft: players choose cards to determine turn order. When your turn comes up, you place a new tile into the city, changing the layout for everyone. Then you spend your limited actions to move, search tiles for items, interact with buildings, or resolve whatever threats the board now presents.
SIX SCENARIOS
Each scenario offers a different objective:
The Encroaching: Recover a relic and deliver it to your faction’s destination, and prevent the other side from recovering theirs.
The Unmaking: Disrupt ritual sites before cultists complete their work and spread strange horrors through the city.
The Collapse: Reach the extraction point before the city seals itself from the rest of the world.
The Clearing: Hold out against escalating waves of enemies for as many rounds as the city allows.
The Hunt: Track down a roaming Herald and drive it back, or protect it long enough for your faction to win.
The Conspiracy: Pursue hidden personal agendas while everyone else does the same, and hope your goals don’t collide.
SECRET OBJECTIVES
Every player is dealt secret secondary objectives at the start of the game: personal goals that score independently of who wins. Heal two different allies. Never make an attack. Place a tile far from your starting position. Deliver the killing blow to something weakened by another player or cultist. These objectives reward varied playstyles and create individual and unique stories within every session.
THE PALE
Each round, a pallid corruption spreads along connected roads, converting tiles into misremembered versions with altered effects and new hazards. Certain threats only appear on these corrupted tiles, shaping how you navigate the board. When the corruption covers the map entirely, the city is lost: enemies surge in strength, and the last routes to safety collapse behind you.
ITEMS AND COMBAT
Tiles can be searched for items: weapons, healing supplies, utility tools, and rarer pale‑aligned equipment. Combat uses a light dice system, with items providing passive bonuses, active abilities, or one‑time tactical effects. Inventory space is limited, and the things you carry may be the difference between survival and defeat.
MULTIPLAYER
Play alone with AI or join an online session with up to four players. The host sets the scenario and player mix, and the same tension, uncertainty, and hidden roles carry over naturally.