Game Overview

Game Overview (a simple game with fun collaboration)

Tangled Yarns is a game for those who want to create a memorable event for friends and families. Offering cooperative play for one to six players, Tangled Yarns features original mechanics, stories, themes, and devices.

How it Plays

Played in rounds broken into six phases each, players will have a choice of one of four actions each round. Planning when and how the sheep will move and combine their action with others is the focus of player interaction. Additionally, where each sheep acts is critical as players can change the game board of the ghost city of Parokiam, delaying dangerous wolves and cultists.

How it Feels

Tangled Yarns offers relatively simple game play that builds to complex planning. New participants of hobby board games will find it comprehensible, and experienced players will find it challenging. This makes it great for families with members aged twelve years and up. Perfect for couples as the two-player version gives the same full gaming experience as the six-player.

Key Features

✔ Original and immersive story of sheep saving their world from a cosmic horror

✔ Six different characters with individualized skills and abilities personalize each game

✔ Unique map mechanics and novel devices guarantee a fresh play experience every time

✔ Enemy decision mechanism, changing board layout, and random event card ordering ensure replay-ability

✔ Simple player actions requiring coordination with other players make Tangled Yarns readily accessible to new players

✔ 40-100 minutes to play based on number of sheep in the game, for ages 12 and up

✔ Built-in solo variant

Immersive Experience (there’s a whole world in here)

Tangled Yarns is a game with depth and lore.  Six sheep from the town of Piermont are selected to quest to the ghost city of Parokiam to close six arcane portal gates and keep the Shepherd from regaining to control their world. But to do that they must defeat the cultists, the wolves, and the angel.

The Shepherd

Tangled Yarns takes place on the planet of Pastur, home to a race of sentient sheep. Thousands of years ago, the planet had been the throne of a cosmic being known as the Shepherd. The Shepherd would bless members of the flock and then sacrifice them so it could use their sanctified blood to make elements imbued with great power: blood clay, blood metal, and blood glass. Legends say that items made from these materials could gain mobility and even sentience. The Shepherd built its capital city, Parokiam, out of these materials allowing it to shift and manipulate the layout of the city at will.  Over the millennia, the sheep, learned the secrets of the tools of the Shepherd and so created a device capable of sending it into a dark dimension lost to its planet. Over time, the story of the Shepherd became a legend, and the skills for manipulating the elements forgotten. But then came the cultists.

The Cultists

Thousands of years passed since the banishment of Shepherd. Some sheep began to long for the days when they lived under the control of the Shepherd, safe from self-destruction.  Cultists of the Shepherd began to gather and relearn the ancient ways of arcane energy, forming cosmic gates in fabric of the universe through which the Shepherd could come if it could only find them. At last, using a ancient device made of blood glass, the Great Eye, the were able to gain the attention of the Shepherd. And now it is returning, seeking the gates that will return it to its throne.

The Wolves

With the approach of the Shepherd, the leaders of Pastur began to experience strange happenings. Their world became filled with monstrous creatures. Among those creatures were the wolves, great beasts that had the ability to disguise themselves as sheep. The sheep understood that the darkness falling upon them came from the approach of the Shepherd. They formed a team, a flock of friends, to travel to Parokiam to try to stop the return of the Shepherd. These sheep had studied the ancient devices and ways of the Shepherd from journals written by Melbrook’s adventuring uncle, Chambers, who has recently gone missing.

The Ghost City

This flock of heroes knew how to close the cosmic gates, but they still needed the arcane elements left behind in Parokiam.  In jumping to the town, they had to power the long quiet sacred altar.  The cultists felt the hidden altar activate, and immediately began to seek it out, journeying themselves to Parokiam. The gate also summoned the dark wolves, servants of the Shepherd, who ranged into town, seeking out the friends, trying to end them before they could close the gates. The race for the planet has begun and will end in the Ghost City of Parokiam.

The Angel

But the Shepherd has more tricks. From the cosmic energies around it, it created angels to do its bidding. Should the sheep manage to close the gates, the cultists of the Shepherd could still summon the Shepherd if they can reach the sacred altar. In a final effort to aid the cultists, the Shepherd developed a plan to send an angel into Parokiam to kill all of the friends should they somehow manage to close the gates.  The Shepherd, the wolves, the cultists, the angel, and the sheep will all soon learn the fate of Pastur.

Unique Characters (meet the sheep)

Every player will get one to two sheep to control. Each sheep has their own special ability and area of the game to stay focused on. Between a bratty princess, a tesla-punk geek, a high-speed nurse, a street-savvy ewe, a fighter looking for revenge, and a master of arcane power, players will have endless fun mixing and matching their teams.

Lily, the Brat

Lily is a total brat and has zero regard for the rules. 

She can choose any power-up (enhanced ability) she wants, regardless of the type of hex tile she stands on. This makes her one of the most beneficial characters in the game.

Melbrook, the Tinker

Engineering expertise and experiments with forbidden technology make her the master of city altering.

Melbrook can rotate the arcane structures of Parokiam better than any other sheep; she can even do this from a distance.  This allows her to make her presence felt more widely in the game.

Moppet (Mop), the Lore-Keeper

Obsessed with the ancient knowledge, always reading, no one knows more about the cosmic gates than her.

Mop understands the flow of arcane energy and the functioning of the portal gates better than any other sheep. She has the power to employ the arcane elements to shut gates from a distance–even through city structures. She is the queen of locking gates.

Blackberry, the Fighter

Once kidnapped by cultists, Blackberry, honing her fighting skills, is eager for revenge.

Blackberry is the strongest of the team in both attack and defense. She is always the best character to send into a fight, whether it is against wolves or cultists.

Twyla, the Ever-Watching

Poppy’s twin, Twyla notices what others miss, especially when it comes to trapdoors and secret passageways.

Twyla’s is always looking out for short cuts and secret passages. Her knowledge of the dark alleys of the ghost city is second to none. City structurers create no barriers for her.

Poppy, the Compassionate

A nurse in her hometown, Poppy can always be depended on to show up to help no matter how far away she is.

Poppy can travel further than any of her companions, but, unfortunately, the knowledge of how to manipulate the city of Parokiam is beyond her. She cannot rotate building tiles like her companions can.

Original Mechanics and Items

Tangled Yarns delivers unique mechanics and devices to enhance your game play. Patent pending devices like the Fate Box as well as novel mechanics such as the tile movement and the player action combinations ensure Tangled Yarns will feel fresh and original making your game night one to remember.

The Fate Box

The fate box is the main tool for deciding where cultists and wolves will spawn, acts as the decision tool for the enemies when they have to choose which direction to go, decides the outcome of combat, identifies random power-ups to be bestowed upon the sheep, and even determines which sheep gets struck down.

Using six marbles and a die cut cardboard fold-up box, the original and simple design makes chooses fast and easy.

The Map of Parokiam

The map consists of hexagons with a blocking building on every hex. The sheep can rotate the hexes to create mazes that delay and even reverse the progress of the cultists and wolves.

As every hex tile is also reversable, as the sheep slowly manage to close the gates, they also restrict their ability to choose the beneficial power-ups available to them. As the game progresses, the ghost city, itself, falls into corruption.

Team Work

The original, combined turn based system allows players to mix their actions and movements creating more opportunities to work creatively and effectively together to defeat the servants of the Shepherd.

The expanded complexity created by deciding which sheep needs to be where to take what action, when, ensures that all player have a chance to see what others might miss. Every player’s opinion can help make, or break, this flock of friends.