A press-your-luck expedition in the family of Diamant / Incan Gold. Two to eight explorers, five caves, one shared nerve.
A cave
Everyone walks in together. A card is turned over, then everyone decides — at the same time, in secret — whether to go deeper or walk back to camp.
- Treasure. The gems are split evenly between everyone still inside. What does not divide is dropped on the path.
- Hazard. The first of its kind is a warning. The second of the same kind collapses the cave: everyone still inside loses everything they were carrying, and the round ends. That duplicate is then removed from the deck for the rest of the game, so later caves are a little kinder.
- Relic. It stays on the path. Only an explorer walking out alone can carry it.
Walking out
Whoever leaves banks what they carry — that is safe for good. Leavers also share the gems lying on the path between them; the remainder stays there for whoever comes out later. Leave alone and every relic on the path is yours as well.
Once the cave is empty, or once it collapses, the round is over. There are five caves; the deepest chest of gems at the end wins.
What is in the deck
- Treasure: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 9, 11, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17
- Hazards: snakes, spiders, mummies, fire, rockfall — three of each
- One relic per cave, five over the game. The first three carried out are worth 5 each, the last two are worth 10.
House readings
Sources disagree on the details, so this table settled on: a relic nobody carries out is gone for good; only one copy of a hazard is removed when it collapses a cave; the deck is reshuffled whole for every cave.
At the table
Arriving late is fine. You take a seat in the camp, marked waiting so everyone can see you are there, and walk into the cave with the rest when the next one opens — nothing to press. If all eight chairs are taken you watch instead, until one frees up.
Everyone plays on their own phone, so the two choices really are simultaneous and secret. You get ten seconds per card. Say nothing and the party assumes you turned back: you walk out with everything you were carrying, which is the safe move — the clock will never gamble your gems for you. Nobody waits on a flat battery, and nobody has to.