About this project
Jack the Ripper - A Primer Card Game
$6,723
172
Jack the Ripper is a primer card game for 3 to 5 players that takes only minutes to play.
While some of you battle to determine who is Jack the Ripper, one of you battles to keep it a secret. If Jack can continue to convince the group he’s not a threat, he may outlast everyone to win the game.
If you have ever played a party game like Werewolf or Mafia, then you are familiar with game play that places you in a detective role to find the bad guys.
In Jack the Ripper, rather than voting someone out of the game, each player has a life total of 15 and you can simply choose to attack a suspicious player. If you can convince everyone else that player must be Jack, then maybe they’ll choose to do the same.
You can see all artwork for the game @ deviantart.com
OBJECT OF THE GAME
The object of the game depends on your character card.
If you are Walter, Victoria, Elizabeth, or Clement the object of your game is to find and destroy Jack the Ripper.
If you are Jack the Ripper, the object of your game is to kill off the other characters before they discover you and to be the last one standing.
Of course, you don’t always end the game playing the character you started with!
GAME SETUP
Separate the Item cards, Ripper cards, and Character cards into their own decks.
Item Deck:
Shuffle the deck and deal each player three Item cards face down. Place the deck face down in the middle of the table or on the Jack the Ripper play mat.
Ripper Deck:
Shuffle the deck and place it face down in the middle of the table or on the Jack the Ripper play mat.
If you do not have a play mat, you may want to place the Ripper Deck near the player that will take their turn last. This will help remind you to flip the Ripper card after the last player’s turn.
Choose which player will go first. You may want to use dice or some other random method to decide this. All players start their life total at 15 points. Your life total cannot go above 15 even if a card adds more than that to your total.
PLAYER’S TURN
Once the character, and item cards have been dealt face down to all players, it is time to start the game!
During your turn, draw one card from the Item Deck and choose a card to play.
Most Item cards target another player and can only be played during your turn, but there are a coveted few "Play at any time" cards that even if played on your turn, do not have to count as your turn.
Some of these cards cause players to turn their Character Card face up.
Others are used to attack and diminish other players' life totals.
At the end of your turn, any Character Cards that are face up and still alive are turned face down again. That way everyone has the opportunity to forget who is playing what characters. Did I mention this makes a great drinking game?!?!
THE RIPPER EVENT
After all the players have had a turn, a Ripper Card is flipped and the card is read to everyone. The Ripper cards are events that are all too often deadly.
These cards may cause all players to lose some life, murder a single character or half of the characters!
You never know what to expect from this Deck but you can expect that it is likely to get worse if Jack the Ripper decides to reveal his or her Character.
Once the Ripper event has completed, any Character cards that are face up are turned face down and a new round begins!
In Jack the Ripper, you play a character that has been attending an aristocrat's party in the year 1888. The main event of the party is a scavenger hunt and you and your group of fellow scavenger hunters are one item away from completing the hunt.
The only problem is, you are trapped in a dark warehouse and you know that one of your group members is the notorious Jack the Ripper, you just don't know which one.
The closest thing you can grab to protect yourself is from the bag of scavenger hunt items that your group has collected. Using these items, the party-goers try to find out who is Jack and destroy him before he destroys all of them.
If Jack can murder all of the party-goers before they murder him, Jack the Ripper wins the hunt and prowls on in infamy. If Jack falls first, then the remaining party-goers share in the victory and become the heroes of Whitechapel.
But would be heroes beware, Jack has some tricks up his sleeve to help take you out.
Players have used many strategies to get ahead in Jack the Ripper.
Some have found ingenious card combinations that help them race to victory. Others have sat back quietly and watched while others are picked off one by one. A few have gotten deeply involved in questioning the other players, trying to sleuth out which one is Jack. Some industrious players have learned all of the character names and are quick to claim to be one of the other scavenger hunters, hiding the fact that they are really the Ripper himself.
Jack the Ripper is mechanically easy to play and it doesn't take long to get through a game but it is dynamic enough to allow for many potential strategies in both the cards you play and the style in which you play them. So you choose, take a pot shot at one of your opponents or talk it out and then decide who to attack!
A primer game is what we are calling a new subcategory of game that seeks to keep games short, between 2 and 15 minutes long, while still allowing players to develop unique strategic play.
A primer game must also be super easy to learn. The idea that we came up with was that we didn’t just want to create short games, we wanted these games to be attractive to gamers that enjoy building a play style and finding new strategic combinations for the win.
So why such short games, what is the point? I can tell you my favorite way to use a primer game is as an opening act! Let’s say you get together with your friends every weekend to play board games, or your favorite collectible card game, or a table top role playing game. These games are your main event for the night, they take time to set up and play.
So before you start, use a primer game as a warm up or to kill time while you wait for your friends to arrive. All that being said, primer games are easy to play and learn so you can play them anytime and anywhere. Here are a just a few ideas of when you might want to play a primer game:
Crypt Monkey Studios, LLC is a gamer family owned and run business. Ty has been playing and creating games for over 20 years and infected Dawn with the bug as soon as they got together.
Out in the “real world”, Ty is a software developer and Dawn is an artist trapped in an accountant’s office. However, they both aspire to the world of game creation.
All three of their children were born with the gaming gene. Their first born killed her first orc just outside of North Freeport at the age of 6 months and her younger brother and sister followed suit. Their son is even looking at becoming a professional gamer for his career. They are so proud!
“We've worked hard to get Jack the Ripper ready for production and we hope you'll help us finish making this dream a reality!” - Ty and Dawn
Meet the Crew:
Risks and challenges
Ty has worked on large software projects for 15 years and Dawn is not only the Jack the Ripper artist, she’s also an accountant. Using these skill sets, we have carefully planned our costs, shipping, and shipping dates. We’ve worked closely with the production companies to understand what the print and ship times will be. We have quotes from multiple printing companies so we are prepared for all quantities.
While our delivery estimates are just that, estimates, and there could be delays in production, we don't foresee any issues in meeting our carefully planned pledge rewards. If all this careful planning is undone by late production or shipping times, we will quickly get updates out to our backers so you are aware of the delay.
So to sum up:
• We’ve planned well so we don’t think there will be issues.
• If there are issues, backers will know about it right away.
So unless the Lords of the Internet shut down due to a zombie apocalypse, we will always keep you updated!
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Funding period
- (30 days)