Homunculus is a game that took shape over 3 days(!) in response to a contest prompt presented by fellow designer and all-around good guy, Ben Moy through The Game Crafter. The Community Anthology Contest challenges participants create a game that will fit on exactly 2 pages of a coil-bound game book and use a very specific set of components.
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In Homunculus, you and your fellow players are a Wizard's minions, imps spawned out of a vat. While your Master is away adventuring, you have free run of his workshop. Experiment with his magical adjuncts to serve your Master better than your fellow minions, and you will be well rewarded when the Wizard returns. Or you COULD just get rid of your competition by doing away with your vat-mates altogether!
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This is a fast, vicious 15 to 20 minute 2-player game for ages 12 and up. You can try to earn your Master's favor by helping with his projects, but you're much more likely to win by killing off the other players and being the last homunculus standing! The game features a dice placement phase, where all the dice are rolled and used to claim up to 3 stations in the Wizard's Workshop. Each station gets you Element Cubes to spend in phase 2, the Action Phase. Players use cubes in this phase to simultaneously reveal one action and resolve it. Anyone with enough cubes can then perform a second action, and so on until everyone passes. Then the round starts over, and new stations are claimed. After six rounds, the Wizard returns, and if there is more than one homunculus remaining, the one who has done the most work around the workshop wins!
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This game was published digitally and physically in The Game Crafter's Community Anthology in April 2022, and is available on The Game Crafter web site.