Outlive is a worker-placement game set in a post-apocalyptic future for 2 to 4 players. Each player embodies a tribe trying to not only survive the deadly radioactive environment, but to overcome it by attracting the attention of a mysterious group known only as “Convoy”. This group scours the remnants of our civilization in search of worthy survivors to join their sub-aquatic cities in the hopes rebuilding what we all now take for granted. 

Each tribe has a shelter that it can improve by insulating it from the ever-creeping danger of radioactivity and by building extra rooms that will give a player bonuses during the game.                                               

 On the left is the radiation track which helps you keep track of how radioactive your shelter is. Along the top and to the right of your shelter, you’ll find space for the resources that you’ll scavenge: water, food, metal, wood, microchips, and munitions. You’ll be using these resources to keep your survivors safe and fed, to repair equipment, and to build new rooms to expand your shelter. 

Each player will have 4 heroes of varying strengths (from 3 to 5) that they will send into the wilderness to scavenge resources and equipment, hunt for food, and to convince other survivors to join your tribe. There are eight different locations on the main board, each providing different loot possibilities for your visiting heroes, each linked by a path. During your turn, you must move a hero if possible either 1 or 2 locations, following the circular path around the board either clockwise or counter-clockwise. 

If you arrive at a location and encounter another player’s weaker hero, your hero will try to intimidate them into coughing up some useful resources. The defending player may expend munitions token to fight you off, temporarily increasing the strength of the hero. 

Once a complete turn has been played (a full day), a calamitous event that will affect all tribes takes place! Starting with the first player, each player decides whether they can (or want to) overcome the event by spending a specified amount of resources. Overcoming an event scores you victory points. Leaving it unresolved however means something horrible will happen to every tribe. These events are cumulative, so for example, if the Animal Mutation event (makes animals tougher to hunt) is left unresolved in the first turn, its effect will be felt in turn 2 along with the new event drawn for that turn! 

After 6 turns the game is over. Agents from “Convoy” will come to inspect your shelter. You’ll score points for every fully-populated room you have, every piece of equipment you’ve repaired, and every survivor you have in your shelter. You’ll also score negative points depending on how irradiated your shelter became over the course of the game. Let it get too high and you’ll lose automatically! 

If you managed things more carefully than your adversaries, you win the game and never have to worry about your tribe’s survival ever again. 

Above is an example of an unbuilt room that will score you 3 victory points when built, has space for 4 survivors and, when fully populated, makes overcoming dangerous events cheaper. If you’ve sent at least one survivor here, you’ll need to pay 1 water, meat, or canned goods at the end of the turn. Each player will have the same 3 basic rooms that they can build. At the beginning of the game, players will draw 6 random advanced rooms and discard 2 of them. Be careful! This crucial step will largely impact your decisions for the rest of the game. Place these room tiles with the unbuilt side face-up on the spaces provided in your shelter. 

At the beginning of the game, you may build any one of these rooms for free. Each player will draw a leader card. 

Among other things, this leader card will show you where you may place your heroes at the beginning of the game. This issue of GTM Magazine includes the exclusive Greg & Emmy leader card. 

A leader’s age determines who the first player will be, the higher the better. Because Greg & Emmy are inseparable, you’ll add their ages together for this purpose. 

Directly beneath the leader’s age, you’ll find a diagram indicating where you’ll be able to place your heroes at the beginning of the game. Greg & Emmy allow you to place heroes in either the forest, the mine, the city of Silent Peak, or Blackwood City. Greg & Emmy also allow you to begin the game with a second room already built for free. 

Download the complete rules for Outlive from our website: https://dudegames.us