Kabula "Huge Package" All In

In a fantasy Island, a magic tree, the Kabula, is held in a Sanctuary to ensure immortality to all inhabitants. The balance is broken when a bunch of deranged characters from Earth find themselves transported to the Island. Their surreal adventures include heavy satire on several topics and the game is suggested to a mature audience.

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Kabula is a competitive, 2-5 player game (+solo mode), involving elements of tabletop RPG, adventure/skirmish board games and which takes a satirical twist on the fantasy theme. Each player takes on the role of one human character, with the goal to steal the Kabula from the Sanctuary and use it for their purpose.

Highlights of the game are: Strategical and fast paced combat based on novel mechanics; the possibility to keep one monster as "familio"; asymmetric heroes;  hilarious encounters. 

This is the Kabula, the Tree of Life. Venerated on a small Island inhabited by all sorts of magical beasts and any other fantasy tropes you can think of.

While it is placed in the Kabula Sanctuary, its powers are amplified to the point that Death is impossible and everybody killed is immediately revived there.

Too much power can disturb the space-time continuum though and peculiar items began arriving on the Island. First it was books, then plastics, then phones and social media.

 If only it had stopped there...

  Each player takes on the role of one human hero, summoned from modern Earth into the Island and firmly intentioned to steal the powerful Kabula for their own purposes. Each hero can develop to three different personalities, each with unique abilities and asymmetric powers.  

   Choosing a different Guardian for the Kabula, will drastically change the game experience, mechanically and thematically. Each Guardian fights and behaves in different ways, and favours different strategies on the side of players, making each game-night a new adventure.

The hero who has the Kabula when the Guardian is defeated wins the game, but be careful: After the Kabula is stolen, death is permanent, the Guardian may wipe you all out!

  Heroes really need to work their Brains to steal the Kabula... and their Teeth and Guts and Legs and why not, their Butt too.

Body Part tokens represent your life energy. Spend them to activate your Actions!

On your Player Mat you have 2 basic actions: Walk, to move, and Rest, which allows you to refresh Used Parts!

The Actions activated on your Player Mat have their effects on the main board! 

You are free to go where you please and interact with the map however you choose, you just need to have enough tokens to pay for your Actions!

Roaming the map you can explore dungeons, encounter weird situations, shop in cities and...attack other heroes or wild monsters! 

Besides those on your Player Mat, you can use any Action from your Item cards! These include attacks, defense and buff/debuff abilities which interact with the Part management system on your mat or your opponent's!

Exploring the Island will get you new Items and allow you to perform new Actions!

You will also collect more Parts to power up your Actions, while customizing the build of your hero!

You won't have to track stats with counters and numbers, new Items and Parts will make you more powerful in a streamlined and intuitive way! 

An Aim Die determines where physical attacks land: This may activate special effects on the attacks but also trigger a response on the target! 

Being the target of an attack has its positive side too. Any time you suffer damage from an attack, you can Recharge one Part token: move it towards the left, the opposite of spending it. Although risky, the more you get hit, the fewer times you'll have to rest. You can also move Parts to a special Rage box, which allows you more powerful moves! 

 Wild monsters and Guardians flip coins to determine which of the Actions on their mat/cards they will use. 

If you want to win the game, get ready to shield off some nasty attacks!

Active Defense Actions allow players to override Aim spending Part tokens, intercepting the attack before the Part aimed at is hit!

Building an armor set (Helmet+Shield+Boots) will increase your chances to activate a Passive Defense and save your Part tokens for what matters to you: DESTROYING YOUR OPPONENTS.

 Monsters' AI doesn't limit itself to offense! Hitting a monster in specific areas will trigger special behaviours, weak points, blocks, counter attacks and all sorts of stuff! 

Each monster is unique and their responses are based on their personality and characteristics!

Do you think anybody can just walk in and steal the Kabula? You need to be famous before you are allowed to get that close!

While exploring Encounters on the Island, you will face choices and get Tags (#) on  your personality cards with a matching trait. Will you do what you think is right for your hero's story or just get the reward that will get you closer to victory?

When you kill a wild monster, the Kabula will bring it back to life and you may take it as familio! A familio is a pet ally, with its own Actions and turn, that moves independently on the map! You and your familio synchronize your energy and Part tokens! You will also get a Tag on the personality card matching the #trait of your new best friend!

Each familio is different, pick one that fits well with your build and play style!

When you have 3 Tags on the same Personality card, you flip it and unlock a new powerful skill! You are now famous enough to enter the Kabula Sanctuary and finally steal that floating tree! It was floating time!

As we unlocked Hero Automa cards, you now have 2 different ways of playing solo! Automa: Very similar to the competitive mode but with AI cards and coin flipping to simulate other players (let's admit it, human brain is overrated).

Energy sync: Play as two heroes who synchronized their energy in order to defeat the Guardian. You play with a single player mat, handling Parts from a shared pool and a single health bar. 

This brings a new challenge in handling your resources and makes your positioning more strategical. 

For both modes you can tune difficulty by changing the number of Guardian cards in play, allowing you more or less turns to level up before the Guardian steals the Kabula on its own and attempts to wipe you out!

As pointed out by many reviewers, this game never plays the same!

Each hero has 3 personality cards, each with a unique way to get more Tags on one side, and a special skill on the other! This grants you 3 completely different ways to play the same hero. Furthermore, you can equip different item cards and Parts to activate. All monsters behave differently and you can use their abilities, after taming them as familios. Each Guardian offers another level of differentiations, changing the mood of the game and tweaking on the basic mechanics.