Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
How it plays
How does it play?
Left for dead, three young students fight for their lives against an unknown entity. The creature, if that is what it is, seems to learn and evolve to counter their every move.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Area Movement
Move pieces between connected regions rather than along individual spaces.
Command Cards
Use cards to issue orders and determine which units or actions can activate.
Hidden Movement
One or more pieces move secretly while opponents infer their locations.
Team-Based Game
Players compete in fixed teams and coordinate toward a shared team result.
Secret Unit Deployment
Place or assign units secretly before their positions are revealed.
Read the full game description
Left for dead, three young students fight for their lives against an unknown entity. The creature, if that is what it is, seems to learn and evolve to counter their every move. They must hunt it down and destroy it, before it finds them first. Anomaly is a hidden movement, deduction, and combat game for 2-4 players. Players in this game are divided into 2 teams. One player is the Anomaly, while the other players are the Students. The goal of each team is to eliminate the other by depleting their health pool. Students share a collective health pool. All students and the Anomaly execute their movement behind a player screen, so it's rare to know exactly where another player is. Students will try to signal their location to the other students using location hint cards, and the Anomaly in turn will use these cards to triangulate the students' positions. The Anomaly needs to feed to stay alive, either on the fuel or the students themselves. The students will be working to destroy the Anomaly's fuel sources, and to damage it with improvised weapons like traps and stun batons. The students have cards with abilities on them that let them and attack or take other actions. However, when they use one of these actions, they must give the card to the Anomaly. The cards have inverse abilities for the Anomaly that will give it new powers, like Possess or Teleport. If the Anomaly gets enough cards, it will also be able to evolve and develop even more powerful abilities. The game ends when the health pool for either the Anomaly or the students is depleted. —description from the publisher