Scope Creep: The Board Game

You and up to three colleagues walk an office floor, grabbing every project that goes past. Each one you finish is worth points. First to 14 wins.

The catch is that the best projects are the ones you cannot finish alone.

EVERY BIG PROJECT IS A DEAL WAITING TO HAPPEN

Project cards ask you to hold a certain set of cards. When you open one you cannot cover on your own, you do not throw it away — you turn to the table and offer someone a cut.

Your cards and theirs count together. The points split however the two of you agree, and you are the one who proposes the split. Ask for too much and they walk. Ask for too little and you have handed a rival the lead.

This is the whole game, and it is why it plays like a board game rather than a puzzle.

THE FLOOR DOES NOT STAY THE SAME

The board is built fresh every game — sixty hex tiles, never the same shape twice.

And it shrinks. A project tile that gets finished is physically removed from the floor. Late in the game the office starts breaking into islands, and the route you were counting on is simply gone. Getting cut off is a real thing that happens to real players.

TEN PROFESSIONS, TEN WAYS TO BEND A RULE

Each of the ten has an ability on its own cooldown, and carries something that tells you what they do before you read a word — a briefcase, a clipboard, a rubber stamp, a pair of binoculars. Some abilities hit the board directly. Others hand you a choice and let you decide how to spend it — and knowing when to spend it is most of the skill.

LEARN IT WHILE YOU PLAY

A fifteen-chapter tutorial teaches you inside a real game against a bot, explaining each rule at the moment it first matters instead of asking you to read the manual first. Eleven rules sheets stay one button away for the rest of your life with the game.

SET THE TABLE THE WAY YOU WANT IT

Four measured presets in the lobby, or turn the knobs yourself: how many points win, what the dice can roll, how many event tiles are in the mix, how hard the cards ask. Every setting on that panel was run through thousands of simulated games first, so the ones that quietly break a match are simply not on it. Add a turn timer if someone at your table thinks too long.

AND WHEN YOU JUST WANT TO PLAY

Bots at three difficulties fill any empty seat, so a table is never short a player. Play the whole game on a controller — every button remappable. Save mid-game and come back. Fourteen languages, all in.

PLAY IT WITH PEOPLE

Bring the table online — play with friends or find a room, with typed and voice chat built in, because talking someone into a split is the game.

• Deals are the mechanic, not a side feature — pool cards with a rival and split the points on terms you propose
  
• A board that is different every game and shrinks as you play — finished projects are removed from the floor, and players get cut off
  
• Ten professions, each with an ability on a cooldown and a prop that says what they do
  
• Bots at three difficulties fill any empty seat, so the table is never short
  
• Rule presets and custom rules in the lobby — only settings that survived thousands of simulated games, plus an optional turn timer
  
• Fourteen languages, full controller support, and save anywhere