Standoff

My role: All art direction, assets, and partial game design.

Collaborators: Rilee Horowitz, Annamaria Koshy

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Setup

Standoff is a space cowboy-themed party game of Russian Roulette. To start, shuffle the action deck and randomly deal 3 actions to each player participating. Make sure each player has a gun to aim and an aim token to give to opponents that matches the color of their gun.

Randomly decide who will start as sheriff by spinning a gun on the table. Whoever the gun is pointing at when it stops spinning will be sheriff at the beginning of the game, and should be given the sheriff badge to have in front of them on the table.

The Game

The game is played in multiple rounds, as many as it takes for there to be one player (or no players) left standing. Each round has 3 phases.

1. Take Aim

At the beginning of the round, whichever player is sheriff will count down from 3, then say draw. When the sheriff says draw, all players must aim their guns at who they intend to shoot. Once everyone has aimed, each player places their aim token in front of the player they intend to shoot to make it absolutely clear. The players may not stop aiming at this player until guns are fired.

2. Resolve actions

Each player must now ready a action. They choose from one of the 3 actions in hand, placing it face down on the table in front of themselves. Once all players have locked in their actions, the sheriff reveals their action first and resolves it. Each player, in clockwise order from the sheriff, will resolve their actions until all actions have been resolved. Aims will change, players may be eliminated. Take it one action at a time, resolving them in order. 

3. Fire Your Guns

Once all actions have resolved, guns fire. There is no resolve order to guns firing, all shots are fired at the same time. Essentially, if a player has an aim token in front of them and does not have a action protecting them, they are eliminated from the game at this time. 

What Happens Now?

Once the smoke clears, see how many players are still left in the standoff.

If there is more than one player left

The remaining players draw actions until they have 3 in hand, take back their aim tokens, and the sheriff badge is passed to the left-most living player from the current sheriff. That player is now the new sheriff. From here, the players take aim again. 

If there is one player remaining 

That player is the winner! Congratulations!

 If there are no players remaining 

Nobody wins! A bullet has claimed each player, but not to worry, there’s always next game.

Rule Clarifications

• The term “pick a player” means that the player that has played this action gets to choose which player currently in the game receives the effects of the card.

  • Ex. “Pick a player. Destroy their bullet.”

• The term “target” refers to the opponent that you are currently aiming at. Cards that affect your target are applied to the player you are currently aiming at when the action is resolved.

• Sometimes the effects of actions combined can be a bit confusing. If the result of two cards acting in tandem becomes confusing or unclear, slow down and carefully read the card effects, usually there’s an answer in there somewhere! If it’s still unclear what happens, have the group come to a decision as to how the cards resolve.

Materials

• 5x Wooden Guns

• 5x Wooden Aim Token

• 1x Sheriff Badge

• 1x Play Mat

• 48 x Cards