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Cats and caverns is a dungeon and dragons inspired cat themed board game! This is a one to four player game for ages 8 and up. It is a tile laying dungeon crawl where you explore the dungeon together or solo to find treasure and fight monsters! Once the board has been fully explored you have to face off with the final boss! There are multiple boss options and this game has a kid friendly version and harder version for the more seasoned players. The four classes you can choose from are currently ranger, mage, barbarian and rogue. Each class has a custom miniature you can paint, and you can insert your own sets of dice for all of the dice hoarders out there, otherwise a base set of dice will be included.

Game overview

Game set up
Roll out the mat and place the three decks in their corresponding spots on the end of the board, do the same with the cave and surface tiles being separate.
Every player will pick a class and will each have a player mat, a figure and a colored set of dice.

Turn overview
Start your turn by rolling for speed, this will determine how many spaces you can move orthogonally.
After rolling you now have three choices, you may pick up to one

Flip up and resolve a new tile and move onto it
Summon the shop
Fight a wandering monster


If you pass over or land on another space as another player you may choose to trade, you may trade anything except xp and stress.
If you roll low on movement you exhaust yourself and gain one stress for each additional tile you move past your initial roll.

Game play
When you flip up a new tile, resolve the corresponding iconography. There are three separate symbols that will match one of the decks of cards. Monsters, events, and loot. If there is more than one symbol on the tile you may resolve them in which ever order you choose.
If the tile reveals the monster symbol you draw a monster card and initiate combat.
When it comes to combat you may choose to solo or ask for help.
For combat Solo, you need to roll for both stats, the three combat skills are DX, dexterity, ST strength and MG magic. Every cat will have different dice for each stat depending on your class. (as marked on your player mat) You choose one of your weapons per combat. You also add any bonuses from your level or companions. You then roll your corresponding die to each stat and with your bonuses you need to meet or beat the numbers on the card.
For combat together you may receive the help of one other cat that is within 1 tiles space away from you orthogonally or diagonally. You both roll for each stat with bonuses and take the higher of the two rolls for each.

Results
If you roll the same number or higher you win and gain two xp tokens and draw however many loot cards are listed on the card
If you fought together you split the two xp, one each. And the one who initiated the fight has the negotiation power for the loot. You may not trade xp or stress but you can trade anything else (including starter weapons.)
If you lost a roll you still have to roll for the other stat and for each loss gain one stress.

End game
The end game will trigger when you fill every tile on the board, remaining monsters do not effect this.
You will resolve the last tile as normal before starting the boss phase.
After the last tile has been resolved the player who placed that tile gets to choose
You can fight the boss alone
You can fight with those adjacent to you
You can collectively decide to fight it all together regardless of where everyone is on the board.
The boss will gain the board bonus according to where it was summoned
You must roll for all three stats
If you lose a roll to the boss it gains a death token, this is per player so one player losing one roll is one token but if more than one player rolls and you all fail it will gain one death token per player who lost a roll.
If you all beat the rolls against the boss you win!
If you wish the player with the highest level can be the winner of the winners. :)

Special rules
If you draw the cat door tile you place that door on your space and the other door on any other space explored or not, if you place it somewhere not explored place a new tile face down underneath it. If that tile is a wall draw a new one.
If a tile at any point in the game prevents you from moving or finishing the board draw a new tile.
If you have the ball thrower and your fighting the happy dog you gain +3 instead of the +2 to your strength
If a weapon gives you reach, this is for helping other players. +1 reach allows you to help up to two tiles away instead of one, and you do not need to use the weapon that gave you reach to assist in that combat.

For advanced play use the characters special abilities and add the bonuses listed on the side of the mat to the monsters stats.

—description from the designer