in each game 2–7 Assistants draw inspiration from a grid of 140 absurd Beasts.

Within this Bestiary, each Assistant secretly selects 3 to 12 Beasts(depending on the chosen difficulty); their coordinates in the grid form the hidden message they must convey. By blending features of these creatures, players create a cryptic alphabet designed to guide another player, the Curator, toward the correct coordinates — all while concealing their meaning from rival Assistants.

Players score points when the Curator successfully deciphers their code without their rivals uncovering it first.

Because every cipher is hand-drawn rather than composed of fixed symbols as in other games of decryption, The Bestiary captures the true essence of deciphering a lost writing system. Just as the letter “A” was once an abstract representation of an ox’s head, these puzzles invite players to uncover meaning hidden within seemingly random elements that tehy chose from the real world (no animals but Beasts in this case). Beyond deciphering, players also become creators, inventing a language accessible only to a select few, making every game feel like a discovery of a hidden, arcane system of communication.

• Original Campaign (link)
• Rules (v.1, EN, May 2024) (link)
• Rulebot (link) second only to myself, this Gemini agent called “The BeastBot” is trained to explain all the rules to you and your friends
• Print-and-Play Components from our Riddle Library (required if you don’t own a copy of The Strange Forgeries)
• Blog
• • Symbiotic Games: Beyond Expansions, Gamefound, April 2024