Embers – Protect the Fire

Embers is a solo card game, designed by Steven Aramini and published by Button Shy Games. Can you defend your campfire long enough to reach dawn? It should only take about 15 minutes.

How to Play

Start by putting down the Night card, showing four hours until dawn. Then shuffle the Fire/Monster deck and place it fire-side up on top of the Night card, to create your campfire.

Randomly select four of the five Hero cards, and place them (level-1 side up) in the four cardinal directions around the campfire (North, East, South, West). The fifth Hero goes “into the tent”, a holding area to be able to be played later.

Now that your campfire and heroes are ready, it’s time to start your survival gauntlet.

1. Spawn Monsters

Start each round by spawning new monsters: one for each hero around the campfire. Add these to any monsters that remain from previous turns.

Spawn a monster by flipping the top card of the deck to its Monster side. Place it just outside the campfire space (in “the wilds”) indicated on the new top card of the campfire. If that location has a hero in it, the monster moves clockwise (one space for each foot symbol) until it either finds a space without a hero, or runs out of “feet” for movement.

This means that in your first round, you will put out four monsters, and none of them will end up in a space occupied by a hero.

Once the monsters are out, examine the new top card of the campfire for an event that will apply throughout the rest of the round.

2. Hero Actions

Now your heroes can use their actions. Each hero has two “action points” to spend. Some actions only take one point, while others take two. A hero must finish using their action points before you can move on to another hero – no splitting up turns!

Action Types

Each hero has a unique maneuver action (for one point). These are generally more complex than a single step clockwise or counter-clockwise, and may require a specific positioning of other heroes.

Every hero can defend, removing a single monster from their current location and adding it to your hand.

A hero could also forage, gaining a Fire/Monster card from the forage pile to add to your hand. (Cards are put on the forage pile through Monster attacks.)

Spend both action points to promote a level-1 hero, flipping them to their level-2 side for more health and better actions to use in the future.

Sometimes you might not be able to use a hero’s actions. They may also bolster, spending their action point(s) to grant a different hero an action point to use immediately.

Stoke the Fire

Complete all the actions you can, across all your active heroes. Then take all the cards in your hand (from defend and forage actions), shuffle them fire-side up, and place them underneath the campfire deck.

3. Monsters Attack!

All the monsters who survived this round now attack. Across all the occupied locations, you decide the order in which the monsters attack. When a group of monsters is together in a location, they combine their attacks into a single larger attack.

Each attack first targets the campfire, then the closest hero. (If multiple heroes are closest, you choose which to target).

When monsters attack the campfire, remove the top card of the campfire deck for each fire icon. Put the stack of removed cards under the forage pile.

When targeting a hero, the monster(s) do one damage for each claws icon. If that damage is equal to or greater than the health of the hero, the hero is defeated and retreats to the “tent”. Any additional damage does not carry over. So a single location monster attack can only take out one hero, and a level-2 hero can survive multiple 1-damage attacks from monsters in different locations.

4. Reinforcements!?

If you have fewer than four heroes around the campfire, you must now add at least one level-1 hero from the tent to an empty space around the campfire. It cannot be a hero who just entered the tent this turn! This is the time to pull from your reserve hero(es) placed in the tent on an earlier turn (or at the beginning of the game).

Once you’ve placed at least one hero, you may place more if you have them available.

Now it’s time to run the gauntlet again, starting with spawning more monsters: one for each hero that’s out.

Keep Defending!

As time passes and the deck cycles, you’ll reveal the Night card. Every time you reveal it, turn it to the next-smallest number. If you are playing at “Recruit” or “Warrior” difficulty, you can also promote one hero for free at this time.

Then place the Night card back under the campfire deck again and continue play. When you reveal it with only 1 hour left until dawn, set it aside. Survive the current turn to win the game – you made it through the night!

On the other hand, if you ever have a turn where all of your heroes are removed from around the campfire, or if you run out of cards in the campfire, you immediately lose.The monsters have overrun your camp and scattered your campfire. The tribe is doomed.

Impressions

We heat our home with a woodstove. After an unusually harsh winter, I appreciate the absolute necessity to keep the fire from going out.

Embers as a solo game is basically a movement puzzle. But its tower-defense mechanism successfully evokes the struggle to stay safe and warm. Every monster you defeat, every card you forage, fuels your ability to survive for another round.

If the monsters start to team up in larger groups, you’re sure to be defeated. Unless you can muster a heroic effort – and a little bit of luck – they’re going to scatter and destroy your campfire.

It took me several tries to understand how to keep the monsters under control. There’s an interesting tension here: the campfire – which you want to keep full until daybreak – is also the source that spawns the monsters. So the more monsters that are out, either attacking or in the forest pile, the faster you run through the campfire. Obviously, running out of campfire cards is bad; but a small campfire means you cycle through the rounds faster and get to daylight sooner. So my instinct to try to take out every monster, every time, lengthens the game!

I Need a Hero!

The five heroes each have a different strength once they are upgraded to level 2: the Defender can take out multiple monsters in a single action, the Forager can grab lots of cards from the forage pile, the Scout can easily bolster teammates.

But I found the Leader and the Firetender the most interesting. The Leader’s upgraded maneuver lets them move ANY hero a single step. This makes it much easier to put every hero exactly where I need them. And the upgraded Firetender reduces how much damage monsters do to the campfire – but at a price: he can only do this passive ability when he’s the target of the monster’s attack!

Don’t forget: every hero maneuvers differently. So getting heroes into the right place to defend against the monsters can feel like a sliding-tile puzzle. Plan out your whole round carefully, to use each hero’s maneuver as effectively as possible!

Survive – and Thrive

Embers is exactly the kind of solo game I look for: the setup and gameplay are both quick, and the rules aren’t too much to wrap my head around. In about ten minutes, I can completely immerse myself into this world of desperate survival, filled with monsters I definitely would not want to meet.

Despite the speed of play, the decisions feel weighty. And winning feels achievable, without being too easy.

Get Embers directly from the Button Shy website, or look for Button Shy games at a game store or convention near you.

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The Family Gamers received a pre-production copy of Embers from Button Shy Games for this review.

Cover art for Embers used by permission.