Welcome to the Cauldron of Fools!! As witches embarking on the path to become more powerful and accurate in your craft, you’ve decided to engage in a good-hearted duel. There are 4 types of witchcraft so decide which spells you would like to focus on: charms, potions, druid-type, or necromancy! Each of you receives 5 green cards to start with. Your witchsona, or character card, will tell you what your special ability is. But be careful! You can only deploy this special ability once per game!

All witches start their actions at the same time and decide on one action: to draw, trade up, or play their special ability! Spells must be 3-cards long at least and have matching symbols on the bottom left and right side to connect them together.

When you’re ready to play your spell, place the cards you will play face-down in front of you and wait for the other witches to complete their actions. Then, count to 3 and reverse your cards! Remember to say the full name of your spell – the words at the bottom of each card to successfully cast, or else you forfeit this round!

Green cards get 1 point, Orange cards get 2 points, and Purple cards get 4 points. If you play one card from your witch-type, double the point on that card! There are secret, powerful spells that are cast by linking certain cards together, so pay attention to any info on the cards in your hand.

In the center of you lie three different decks of cards: green, orange, and purple decks. Each colour of deck contains cards pertaining to all player’s witching needs, but you won’t know what you’ll get till you draw from the pile!

Your green decks are the least powerful items and will score you the least amount of points, but you can trade up to get stronger cards from the orange and purple decks. When all witches have prepared their spells, you’ll show your cards and speak the enchanting words that form in your mind (and that are written on the bottom of each card that matches up…). See who wins the round by adding up the points for each card, and give yourself double points for 1 of your type of witch-card in your spells.

2-4 witches may play at a time, but there are extra decks in case you want to really spice things up and have a larger duel of wands!

Target Audience

Cauldron of Fools is a party game for friends & families ages 10 and up, short, fast-paced, easy to pick up.
It’s great for board-game nights, as a quick dessert after supper, or for casual get-togethers!

Intended Experience

Game Experience

Build decks of cards with witchy elements that combines the quirkiness of party games like Love Letter with the allure of the world of Harry Potter. Cauldron of Fools! is a fast-paced, set-building card game.

Witches have a long history in popular culture and history. Only once a year, on Halloween, folks feel comfortable pretending to be witches, goblins, or things of the fantastical. Halloween and horror-fantasy pick up on the power of donning costumes, roleplaying, and engaging with fear. A game like Cauldron of Fools! welcomes players into a shared fantasy where you contain the macabre with your powers of witchcraft.

As players don their witchsonas, they’ll experiment with a variety of cards from the worlds of charms, potions, necromancy, and the living world of the druid. From toenail clippings, eyeballs, and frog legs to ghouls, ghosts, and werewolves, players will get drawn into an enchanting world. Players focus on their own witch-type items and materials to learn combinations of items to perform spells and with repeated gameplay, can work towards building certain decks of cards to master their type of witchery!

The cards are full of spooky, strange items that appeal to vivid art styles of horror-fantasy that balances the macabre with the playful!

Pillars

Cute, spooky card art
Fun, themed role-playing experience
Accessible gameplay
Casual competitive gameplay

Theme and Story

“There's a little witch in all of us.” (Dianne Wiest as Aunt Jet Owens, Practical Magic, 1998.)

“It’s not about broomsticks or cats. It’s about power.” (Anne Theriault, “The Real Reason Women Love Witches, 2016. < https://theestablishment.co/the-real-reason-women-love-witches-647d48517f66>).

The fantastical world of witches and wizards came about from real events like the witch hysteria in the 1400’s, the Salem’s witch trials from 1692-3, to films like The Witches (1990), and even card games like Magic the Gathering (1993). Popular media, mainly books and film, challenge the idea of the witch as evil and present us with an opportunity to see ourselves as masters of magic. Part of the allure of witchcraft is that it might not be so far from our reality – our curiosity about the magical rests at the edges of our world.

Challenge Brief

Overview of Skills

In order to really engage players with this sense of the imaginative, the game is a balance between reflexes, tactical choices and some basic management.

Players use their reflexes to:

Choose actions quickly
Cast their spell by saying the word that forms when cards are aligned

Players use tactical choices to:

Analyze the options of the cards in their hand
Make a decision about whether or not to trade-up to higher power cards
Decide when to use their special skill
Play a short-term, low-point game or a long-term high-point game

Players use management to:

Decide whether or not to keep certain cards in their hand
Build up more powerful spells after a few turns.

Gameplay Mechanics

Witchcraft in this game is about low-challenge deck building. Players can spend more time digging into card combinations, or they can play casually with available cards.

Simultaneous Action Selection: players will look over their witchsona player card to see which actions are available and decide what they want to do on their first turn. Players will then perform their action. After all players have decided with action to do, they will put their first spell (or sequence of cards from hand) face down in front of them. All players will then reveal their cards at the same time, speak the spell they are casting, and then score each spell based on their card types.
Action Point Allowance: one of four available actions is permissible for each player on their turn.
Hand Management: players are rewarded for playing cards in sequences designated by matching symbols in the bottom corner of each card. Card types vary, as do the points per card. There are opportunities for players to exchange their green cards for more powerful orange or purple cards thereby making each round have its own set of optimal outcomes.

Playing the Game and Rules

Objective & Victory Conditions

Mix- and-match at least 3 cards to cast a spell. There are various types of cards that can be used to create powerful spells. Green Cards score 1 point, Orange scores 2, and Purple scores 4. If you use a card pertaining to your witchsona, you can double the points for that card. If your spell contains only cards of your witchsona, double your total score! Play round-by-round until someone finishes their deck.

The first player to clear their deck ends the game. The player who won the most rounds is the winning witch!

Game Setup

Welcome to the Cauldron of Fools! Sit in a circle to begin playing and leave enough space for you to lay out two decks of cards in front of you and an area in the center that’s large enough for you to place cards when you cast spells.

Players decide which witch they wish to play and pick up the corresponding character card
Shuffle 30 Green Cards per player (so if 2 people are playing, shuffle 60 green cards)
Distribute 5 cards from the shuffled green deck to each player
Place the remaining green cards face down in the center of the play area
Shuffle 15 Orange Cards per player (so if 2 people are playing, shuffle 30 Orange Cards)
Place Orange Card deck face down next to the Green Card Deck
Shuffle 11 Purple Cards per player (so if 2 people are playing, shuffle 22 Purple Cards)
Place Purple deck face down next to the Orange Deck
Place cards face down in front of the player’s hand. Players will draw from this deck any time they spend cards for spells

The Game Loop

Rules

Don’t play spells until all witches have completed their action-per-turn
Spells only count if witches remember to say the incantation formed by connecting cards correctly
Cards must be connected by matching symbols in the left and right corners
One player must keep score of who wins each round to determine the winner at the end
Players can only carry a maximum of 7 cards in their hand at any time
Once spells are played, place spell cards face down in the discard pile to the right of the Purple Deck
Double points per card that corresponds to the player’s witchsona
Double total points of spell if all cards played correspond to the player’s witchsona

Materials & Components

8 Witchsonas cards (2 Druids, 2 Charm-types, 2 Necromancers, and 2 Potion-types)
224 Character cards - (30x Green, 15x Orange, 11x Purple) x 4 (Necromancer / Charm / Druid / Potion)
Score-card and cute witchy-pencil to add up who wins each round
THE WITCH’S HONOUR CODE

This is for a potential level in Psychonauts!

Summary
Siggy’s parents are heralded as the best things to happen to the comics world since Alan Moore or Kate Beaton. Siggy is a gifted artist themselves, but the celebrity comics creator life just isn’t for them (especially with all the movies being made!). Their true love is the world of books! Siggy has always looked at librarians longingly – indexing! categories! books on policy! lack of deadlines!

Unwilling to let their parents down, and torn between their own desires and the desire to make their parents happy, Siggy sits alone in a library of the Asylum, unable to read, enjoy, or create. Siggy’s anxiety is palpable, and their sense of indirection is holding them hostage. Can Raz help?

Enter Siggy’s mind to discover rules and rigidity enforced by a creative job occupation, and the world bursting beneath it. These parallel worlds can’t exist without one-another, but they are not balanced. The only way to help Siggy will be to traverse their world and understand what is really enforcing those rules. The reward? The last piece of costume needed to enter the Asylum!

Anxiety is characterized by

A sense of urgency
Fear of the unknown
Control
Overdeveloped superego (read: authority)
Spiraling

Raz’s introduction into Siggy’s mind is defined by a sense of urgency and the necessity to slow things down. The level itself will be a gradual descent or spiral into a main arena, where Raz will face the distorted embodiment of the superego, Siggy’s Mom.

New Gameplay Mechanic

The Time Suck badge allows Raz to slow time without changing his own speed. This helps counter Siggy’s anxiety by making fast-moving obstacles more traversable. Time suck lasts 5 seconds.

As well, the badge improves focus so Raz can figure out which enemies to target first, move out of the way, move objects out of the way, or if there are key points of interest in the scene or weak points on enemies.

Level Summary

Diving into Siggy’s mind, Raz is immediately put into a corridor, running alongside the psychic projection of Siggy. Periodically, the walls shake and an animal-like roar can be heard. Raz turns to Siggy, while running: “So uh, what exactly IS that noise?!” Siggy: “It’s a monster!” Raz: “What do we do? Can we slow it down?” Siggy: “I don’t know how! I wish I could slow down, but there’s so many deadlines!” Ford pops out from Raz’s ear (they’re still running) and gives him instructions to look for a new badge – the Time Suck badge! Raz spots a door at the end of the corridor - “We can do it! Concentrate!” Siggy and Raz burst through the door. As that happens, we see a shot-by-shot of 3 panels – one of dark, shapeless monster at the back of the corridor, one of Raz and Siggy’s hands on the doorknob, and the final one as they spill out into the next panel with some comic-style sound effects like “BADOOSH!” as the door shuts.

You find yourself in a large printing-press / manufacturing plant where the goal is to put out as much creativity as possible. Except that, with so many deadlines, tasks, and pressure, it’s not the colourful and imaginative world that one might expect of a comics creator. Sound is punctuated by corresponding letters and a little bubble near where the sound is produced.

You’ll have to descend into the factory to find out what’s driving this machine. But first! You’ll have to find the Time Suck badge.

Though the building itself creates the main pathway and the descent into the final showdown, there are rooms and subsections where specific quests can be carried out and entrances to Siggy’s parallel world are accessed. In the first section, Raz can explore the main office or studio where orders are given out to find the Time Suck badge. As Raz explores the office, he finds breaches in the factory-style aesthetic. These breaches let Raz walk under the original level (sort of like the brain in the introduction to the game that you can run around). This parallel world is bright and calm and filled with books and little librarian tasks and quests to help uncover the true identity of the monster at the center.

The Time Suck badge and the time slow mechanic are introduced first in the parallel layer, allowing Raz to slow time and handle some rowdy library-goers. The rowdy library-goers are fast! Too fast to hit all at once with Raz’s psi blasts, so he’ll need to use time slow to target the leaders, or to topple a stack of books at just the right moment!

The librarian gives Raz a piece of comic book panel that will reveal what (or who) the monster really is. Raz will have to complete quests in order to gain access to the rest of the floors in the dungeon and help Siggy confront the monster.

Quests to get the comic panels will all follow after corridor sequences, which are timed challenges for the player to get to the next door before the monster reaches them. Quests need the Time Suck to be completed. In one example, Raz will use Time Suck for stealth to carefully maneuver around ink jets blasting from the ceiling like laser trip-wires with a piece of comic panel waiting in the center.

Each new door unlocks a new corridor where players will have to run from the mysterious monster. The factory’s descent will also introduce more of the library ingredients, showing how Siggy’s desires are poking up through the superimposed comics-creation world.

Anxiety Enemies

The crucial enemy of anxiety is the self! Projections of Siggy wearing comic-book hero masks (no copyright infringement, of course!) will attack Raz. The mind has also laid many traps and areas to protect itself. Watch out for projectiles that hurl horrifying time crunches and negative energy at Raz!

At the Center of it all: The Super Ego

After descending successfully down the spiral of Siggy’s mind, Raz finds himself in an open arena. The area is large, large enough for the colossal monster inside Siggy’s mind can lumber around. There are obstacles like dilapidated columns made of books that Raz can use to dodge or hide from the monster. Siggy is drawing frantically in the center of the arena, guarded by the monster. If Raz wants to help Siggy, he’ll need to find a way to bring the monster down!

Using the Time Suck badge, Raz can slow time down. The 5 second time slow lights up weaker areas on the monster that Raz can target with Psi blast. Raz will need to use the Thought Bubble to get in close enough and target.

The first shot that Raz lands successfully dislodges a part of the monster, like its arm, or a piece of its leg, or part of its head. There are 5 total pieces, each one in a slightly more difficult spot, and the final one being on the monster’s back, which requires Raz to be fast enough to get behind the monster without it turning.

With each hit, the monster’s garbled language starts to become more human. It coalesces into lines a parent might say about doing one’s best, and how wonderful Siggy is.

When the monster’s shell has been damaged 5 times, its exterior crumbles off to reveal Siggy’s mom on the inside of the monster. Siggy stops drawing and approaches her now normally-proportioned parent. “I want to be a librarian.” “Love yourself and what you do. After all, I’m just a projection of your mom.” They hug and the level closes with the library and comics printing press becoming one level instead of two parallel levels.

CAULDRON OF FOOLS!