During our first foray into The Night Cage, a friend's casual comment stuck with me for the entire board game. "It's funny", he said. "We're playing as prisoners in a dreadful place, yet we're all still willing to work together".
The Night Cage isn't a board game that bulks its rulebook out with backstory. It doesn't stop to explain why the prisoners you become have been placed in the titular cage. It does, however, explain in grisly detail how dire your situation is.
The Night Cage is an eldritch, unknowable space with tight tunnels that seem to stretch forever - and change behind you as you pass through. Pits can suddenly form beneath your feet, and a single misstep might place you in the path of a beast whose teeth and tentacles defy biology. Or, worse, you might fall through a hole with no bottom and keep falling forever.
Only a few certainties exist to anchor your sanity. One of these is your sputtering candle, which illuminates new tunnels as you carefully edge through the maze.
In true Lovecraftian fashion, the Night Cage can't be described by common logic or language. That actually makes it a more suitable tool for understanding our own lives. Horror is, as always, the perfect metaphor.
We live in a world of extremes that are terrifying and tough to explain. In war-torn and occupied nations, violence occurs on a scale that the human mind struggles to quantify. Absurd rhetoric dominates reason and pushes clown-like figureheads into office, where they place targets on the backs of the vulnerable. The economy - and even the climate - seem to be on a countdown to doomsday, with chances to recover dwindling like a candle without much wick.
In these circumstances, it's easy to feel trapped. It's natural to retreat, sheltering from the dire daily news cycle. It's all too easy to adopt a 'survival of the fittest' outlook, where you only have the capacity to consider your own safety and sanity.
This, I believe, is why my friend was so shocked by The Night Cage - a game where a group of ordinary people who, in the face of overwhelming odds, choose to work together.
Unlike the real world, The Night Cage offers a simple solution to its problems. Somewhere in this prison, you'll find a gate that can only be opened by turning multiple keys - simultaneously. If you want to escape, cooperation is your only option.
Each turn, your prisoner must make a choice. Stand perfectly still, or inch forward in the dark, hoping to find a gate or the keys you need to unlock it. Your candle will highlight new paths to take, but once a tile disappears from your line of sight, it's gone forever. Even choosing to do nothing has consequences, as a tile from the draw stack is discarded instead.
The draw stack represents the wick of your candle, and once there are no tiles left, you are plunged into a darkness that's hard to escape. Plus, if you manage to discard too many keys or gate tiles, or you lose someone to a bottomless pit, your chances of escape are snuffed out forever.
Games of The Night Cage are exceptionally careful. The cost of every decision must be weighed. Can you afford to lose a crucial corridor by letting it stray from your light? Will disturbing a monster set off a devastating chain reaction, and can the friends you endanger endure such a situation? When backed into a corner, is it worth the risk of jumping into a pit to see where you end up?
Crucially, these decisions are never made alone. Each player has the final say on how their prisoner behaves, but it benefits them to listen to the strategies of the many. When you survive together or not at all, it's more important than ever to consider how your actions (or inaction) affects others.
These ideals are firmly embedded in The Night Cage's mechanics, and our group's behavior clearly shifted to adopt its philosophies as we played. When first choosing our prisoners' starting positions, we spread out as much as possible to cover the most ground. By the climax, we clustered in small spaces, reluctant to stray too far from each other.
A lone prisoner is vulnerable to becoming lost with an unlit candle, so sticking together is a vital survival tactic - even if it makes us more vulnerable to monster attacks. Spread the group too thin, and it becomes easy to lose a precious key or gate tile.
Survival is far from guaranteed in The Night Cage. If you're playing with the advanced rules, you can expect your chances of escape to be vanishingly slim. But even if the darkness takes you, The Night Cage has sent a message, clear as day.
In a world of overwhelming fear, individualism is perilous. This is how we get politicians hosting parties during national lockdowns. This is how we breed the apathy that makes extreme politics possible. This is how we undermine communal action that could make a difference.
We must reach out with compassion and invest in protecting others. Inaction is as risky as action, and our chances are better if we work together.
Because, when the lights die out, either we all survive, or none of us do.
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