Description

War has left its terrible wake. The Star Tower and the Night Tower have their truce, but for us in the lands between, everything has twisted, everything has shattered, everything has been scarred by their dread magic. And power-hungry factions stir. The Crimson Coven...the Eye Cult...the Doompipers. But let them have their mad schemes. We have ours. We find the shards, we harvest them, and we fuse fresh spells. Not because we crave power, but because we must so we might survive. I shall follow the trails of those who walked before me, and fashion my own magic before I perish in my SHARD HARVEST.

In Shard Harvest, you play as an aspiring mage in a land following a devastating magical war between the Star Tower (in the west) and the Night Tower (in the east). An uneasy truce exists between these two schools of magic, but their war has left the land between fraught with dangerous magical energies, strange factions, and hopeful villagers who wish to gain magical power for themselves by harvesting the shards that periodically emerge across the landscape, shards the talented can fuse into powerful spells. You are one such harvester. Can you survive the unforgiving landscape long enough to attain mastery or will you perish as the many shard harvesters before you?

This is a board game for 1 player. You control a shard harvester, seeking the power to create spells. Travel can be challenging and tiring. Encounters can be deadly and devastating. Your spells will help you survive the perilous wild. You might die from wounds or succumb to old age. If you have one or more shards collected and you reach either of the towers (the Star Tower or the Night Tower) you win the game, and your shard harvester may either retire or resume the harvest in future games. It may take several journeys for a single shard harvester to achieve the maximum victory.

This is a Make-as-You-Play game, which means that you will create and modify many of the components during play. The components include the rules, the game map, index cards, a pen or pencil, a pawn for your shard harvester, and a collection of coins or cubes for the shards. Each game of Shard Harvester will evolve differently, with different terrain shaping the lands between the towers and different spells available to gain. Moreover, there is no limit to the number of shard harvesters you can make to explore your world or the number of spells they can conceive.

—description from the designer