Advert: We were gifted this prototype in exchange for a review. All opinions are ours and our reviews are always honest. Components and gameplay may change.

Jinkies! It’s officially a spooky season, and I know where all the skeletons are buried – no, not in my closet, but in the upcoming chilling game Sepulchre! Let’s dig in to it before it launches on Gamefound next week.

👥 2 to 4 players
⌛  20 to 90 minutes
🧠 14+ years

Game overview

In Sepulchre (which btw means burial place or tomb, pronounced SEP-ull-kuh in the UK and SEP-ull-ker in the US), players are racing to be the first person to fill their grave with 3 complete skeletons – but no one said you couldn’t mix and match the bodies!

On your turn you can play as many cards as you want from your hand of 7. Use Skeleton cards to build up your own skeletons, use Decay cards to remove parts of your opponents skeletons, and use Cemetery cards for all kinds of hijinks to give you the upper hand. The only rule is that you can’t be TOO mean – each turn you can only play one card per player that directly targets each player (Decay or Cemetary), i.e. in a 3-player game, Player 1 can play one card targeting Player 2 and one card targeting Player 3. Any other Cemetery cards – like ones that affect all others players or the active player – are fair game! At the end of your turn draw back up to 7 from the coffin deck.

There is some etiquette when it comes to graverobbing and skeleton collecting: (1) You must always start with a skull, (2) You cannot start a new skeleton until the current one is completed, and you can’t do both on the same turn, and (3) You cannot steal from a completed skeleton that is covered by a new/partial skeleton (unless as Cemetery card says different, that is!). 

Our first impressions

• Sepulchre has amazing table presence, from the marbled grave board and coffin-shaped cards, to the incredibly cool artwork. The art gives me (American) vintage witchy vibes, which I LOVE and would happily have some of the designs as framed prints – and Matt said it’s the kind of style he would like as a tattoo.

• Collecting skeleton parts and building them into your grave is satisfyingly tactile. We also like that each skeleton ‘set’ is uniquely designed and had different coloured backgrounds (and each has their own name in the rules!). It is purely for aesthetics but adds enjoyment to the skeleton building, whether you’re trying to collect a matching set or going for a mix and match.

• Each Cemetery card design is unique, and can range from take-that thievery (from other players’ graves or hands), to defensive cards that protect your own skellies. Player interaction and competition is high, and some cards can (intentionally) dramatically swing the game in favour of one player or another – for example, one card lets you steal a whole complete skeleton from someone else! We enjoyed the dramatic twists and turns, but it’s maybe not for those who find random swings of luck frustrating.

• All the Cemetery skullduggery means that a game of Sepulchre can be super quick or super long. Not knowing how long the game will take might make it trickier when timings are important (like a multi-game sesh or a toddler nap!) – but in our opinion it’s more a game that you’d build a game night around.

• One small thing – the rules suggest using the big game box as ‘the ossuary’ to hold all the skeleton parts. The box is quite deep so we found rooting out the parts we needed was a bit fiddly. Instead we used the two coffin-shaped boxes (and lids) that store the skeleton parts and coffin cards when the game is packed away, and these worked much better for us (and were still thematic!).

Final thoughts

Sepulchre has excellent bones – it looks ghoulishly gorgeous on the table and the tug-of-skeleton gameplay is a lot of fun! The theme is wonderfully executed and the gameplay is simple enough for anyone to pick up (we’ve played it with each of our mums, who both won! Outrageous!).

If you’re after a fun light game where the spooky vibes are on point, make sure you sign up for the campaign here.