Dam-ed

You are a beaver, the smartest one in your family. Wolves have broken into your family’s dam, and you need to do your best to survive as they prowl the halls, looking for fresh meat. You now sit in the Dam HQ, directing your family to gather food to stay alive and scrap to hold back the ravenous wolves, praying that the doors will hold.

Objective: Survive as long as possible.

The tools to survive

• Your Beavers: You have the 9 other members of your beaver family to give orders to. None of them are particularly intelligent, so they can’t adapt to new situations: they only follow every direction you give to the letter, and they can only remember a certain number of orders.
  • They remember sights very well, though, and always give you a perfect recollection of everything they saw on their trip as soon as they come home.
  • Each Beaver also has a different speed stat: The faster a beaver is, the faster they’ll be able to complete orders and return to the relative safety of the HQ.

• The HQ: Located at the very center of the Dam, this is the safest place within it. With heavyset doors at both entrances, this is where you sit and direct your family, and where they return after completing their orders
  • The doors, while strong, are not invincible. Each can take a total of 10 hits from wolves before being breached, resulting in the consumption of you and your entire family.
  • The HQ is also where you have your map of the Dam, which shows you a full layout. It's just a piece of paper, though, so if won’t update automatically with any information. Want to mark something? Use the markers, pencils, and stickers provided to markup the map however you wish.

• Scrap and Food: These two items can be found throughout the Dam, and more will appear every so often, so be sure to recheck locations.
  • Scrap: Used to barricade hallways, dig tunnels, and reinforce the doors to the HQ, Scrap is versatile and incredibly useful. You don’t have any with you when the game starts, though, so you’ll need to send your family out to find some
  • Food: Not used to do anything, but if you run out of it, you’ll starve to death. You start with some, but you’ll need to get out there and find more quickly.

• Orders: To make your family actually go out and do things, you’ll need to give them orders. Some Beavers are smarter than others, so some can remember more orders than others.
  • There are a total of 5 you can give them:
    • Move to
      • Tells the Beaver to move to a coordinate within the dam. Without one of these, your family will just stay in the HQ and try to do things, and won't accomplish much of anything.
    • Scavenge
      • Tells the Beaver to pick up a single item from the ground. This could be a bunch of food, or a single piece of scrap.
    • Barricade to
      • Tells the Beaver to barricade between where they’re standing and the coordinates you give them. The Beaver needs to take 1 piece of scrap with them to do this, which is consumed when the Barricade is made. If you use this while in the HQ, you can reinforce the door between the HQ and the coordinate you give.
    • Tunnel to
      • Tells the Beaver to dig a tunnel from their location to another location. They can only dig a single space orthogonally, and digging a tunnel consumes a piece of scrap (much like Barricading).
    • Distract
      • Tells the Beaver to make a lot of noise, drawing all wolves within 5 tiles of its location to where it is, distracting them from trying to beat down the doors to the HQ.
  • Other Information
    • Beavers always return to the HQ after completing all their orders, so don’t worry about giving them a move order targeting the HQ

The threats to your survival:

• The Wolves
  • A number of wolves have broken into the dam and are trying to kill you. They wander aimlessly, but are incredibly lethal, immediately killing any Beaver they come across.
  • They’re predators, they don’t want to waste energy. If they come across an obstruction trying to get somewhere and there’s another route they can take, they’ll take that route. If not, though, they’ll do what they need to do to keep going.