The Estate of Baron Archambaud, an Ingrate
A downloadable game
Baron Archambaud's palatial estate is as opulent, confounding, and eccentric as the man himself. He took something you desperately need and locked it away in his vault, and you are determined to retrieve it. You are not the first to attempt this thievery. A dangerous path lays before you.
The Estate of Baron Archambaud, an Ingrate is a self-contained, single-player card adventure in which players use a deck of standard playing cards to explore the Baron's estate and retrieve an heirloom from his vault.
Players build the estate by dividing the deck by color. The black cards represent rooms with encounters, puzzles, or random effects. The red cards represent items and treasures that you receive for successfully resolving encounters.
Many encounters can be resolved in three ways: FIGHT, ESCAPE, and CHARM. Players roll 2d6, add any bonuses or boons, and attempt to beat the number indicated. Items you pick up can help you, and you can choose a character at the beginning with bonuses in these stats to suit your play style.
It is highly encouraged to print this game so you can easily flip through the references.
The FIGHT, ESCAPE, and CHARM mechanics are loosely based off of the Tunnel Goons system by Nate Treme. All art used is in the public domain.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $2.50 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Comments
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This is very cool and a clearly represents a lot of effort and imagination from its creator. I'm having a little trouble with the movement though; it seems very easy for the strict suit-determined exit directions to yield impossible movement options. For example, a spade on the left or right edge of the board, approached from the side, has no valid exit unless specifically marked. What do we do in these situations? Just pretend it's a club?
FYI: I've been highlighting Solo But Not Alone 3 entries on my personal twitter feed (https://twitter.com/RabbitMatchGame/status/1619922074797240320)
I don't see an address for you, so sparing you a trip to that hellsite....
Side hope for https://itch.io/b/1692/solo-but-not-alone-3… entry: this gets enough attention to warrant SRD/JAM attention. Imagine the community sharing puzzles, maps, item lists...
Played this for the first time last night. Died 3 rooms in because I rolled poorly vs an automaton XD Def going in for a replay because it was fun. Great game! (even if I have terrible dice)
Also, for anyone else interested, I know part of the setup is the laying out of cards to see the 'board', but having no room for a layout led to an improvisation. I separated the reds and blacks, removing the black suit face cards as per the setup, but I kept the piles and instead marked down a small map to track my progess with which cards. Still does the trick just fine. :3
This is actually really helpful! I don't have room for the card layout either. Thanks for sharing.
Is anyone available to answer questions? I arrived at the vault after just 7 rooms. I don't understand the puzzle-- do I need to explore more rooms to get it?
This is a very charming game! I enjoyed the set up and ambiance of the estate. The writing and scenarios make the game very immersive, and I had a blast exploring. Sadly, I ended up arriving at the Vault after only 5 turns and was very unprepared for the final puzzle.
SPOILER:
Unless I missed another way to clear the last puzzle, you need to explore the mansion until you manage to gather 4 clues needed for the Vault, without knowing that you need them in the first place. Great for someone who likes to explore, not great for my Dandy starting out with 5 Stamina and -3 Escape. I did dip out of the Vault to explore further, but gave up after a particularly nasty fall down the Tower.
Hey Galazor! I did a slightly bumbling run through on my YouTube channel, and got a bit lost in places (maybe I made a mistake), but hopefully you enjoy it!
I played this game just this past weekend and it was pretty fun! I had a hard time getting used to the rules, so I may try to play this again in the near future (have to forget all the puzzle answers!).
I didn't see the comments about the spelling mistake on the gallery puzzle and ended up not getting that one, but I think I was close!
I just played it and i find it very cool ! The design, the system in general and the ambiance, everything is perfect !
Alas i couldn't solve any of the puzzles, maybe i missed something, i don't know.
Thank you for this game ! If you are interested for a french translation, contact me :)
The Estate Of Baron Archambaud is a 32 page one-player house-crawl that feels a bit like a gamebook and a bit like an rpg.
It feels a bit like Bluebeard's Bride or House Of Hell---but without the unbelievably punishing difficulty of HoH or the frequent what-if-kink-but-scary encounters of BB---and there's some genuine notes of comedy in Estate to even out the eerie moments.
Basics-wise, Estate is played played with a deck of cards and some d6s. The cards are used to build and populate the estate-dungeon, guaranteeing pretty solid replayability, and the dice are used to randomize success chance for attacks and things like that.
There are multiple character classes you can choose to play, something I haven't seen in many gamebooks before, and you can choose to bypass encounters with social skill instead of force---another neat change. Admittedly, the mechanics are the same as for fighting, just with higher stakes, but it feels like it fits the setting better to have a social option than it would to simply make all encounters fights.
The writing is noticeably strong, and the layout is both stylish and makes everything easy to read. The art is fitting and abundant.
Overall, Estate surprised me a ton. It's easily one of my top ten favorite gamebooks or solo adventures. If you like those things, or you just like good adventure writing, or if you like victorian-eerie settings, I would heavily recommend picking this up.
Minor Issues:
-Page 7, South Courtyard, "its smelled you" it's
-Page 7, Baron's Wardrobe, you can't take items without discarding items? This feels a little weird.
This game reminded me of the kinds of books I used to love as a little kid. Absorbing and adventuresome - I got unusually lucky on my first playthrough, so there's still a lot left unexplored!
I played this game in the sun and it was a delightful experience. The baroness is my favorite part of this game.
This was a fantastic game! Really well-designed and fun with some very quirky encounters, and it was both challenging and engaging enough that I spent the better part of my day playing it over and over again until I beat it! The puzzles are cool, although I noticed an error in the puzzle in the Gallery (in the 7th column of letters, the S should be replaced by an N!). A very enjoyable way to spend several hours!
I came here to mention the Gallery typo, too. It threw me for a minute. Otherwise, a very enjoyable game!
amazing card-based heist game!
A lot of effort was poured into this design. Frankly, I'm not sure I have totally grasped it yet, but I like a lot of what I'm seeing right off. Card decks being used to randomize rooms and items, a "map" built out of cards, lots of pre-generated scenes and objects Great use of public domain art.