Twisted Cryptids

Gameplay

Welcome to Twisted Cryptids, a strategy board game in which all your favorite cryptids come out to play. Meet Mothman, Jackalope, Bigfoot, and Loveland Frog, the creatures that roam The Wilderness. Take on your Cryptid persona and compete against others to earn the most Myth and prove you are the True Legend.

Set Up

There are a few types of tokens and cards to get acquainted with before you begin. Double-sided Myth tokens will help you keep track of your points in the game. There are 30 Human tokens: 10 of each Flavor: Hiker, Hunter, and Researcher. There’s a Sinkhole token that’s only relevant in a two-player game, and there’s a First Player token, which helps keep track of who the First Player in each round is. Finally, there are 12 Hiding Spot tokens, three for each Cryptid, that you will place in different Sites in The Wilderness.

The biggest cards in the box are the 4 Cryptid cards, which display a lovely illustration of each Cryptid as well as your Cryptid Power, which can be used during the game at certain times. More on that later. The smallest cards in the box are the 10 Hidden Trait cards, each of which has a challenge you alone will try to complete during the game to earn extra points at the end.

Next are the 36 Sighting cards (9 for each Cryptid). There are four different types of Sighting cards: Decoys, Hoaxes, Silhouettes, and Real Deals. Each Sighting card tells you how many Myth points you will gain or lose if certain Humans are present.

12 Event cards will prompt Humans to move around The Wilderness at the beginning of each round. Finally, Action cards, which will make up your hand, specify a number of Humans, Flavor of Humans, and specific function that will allow you to change the distribution of Humans in The Wilderness. There are four types of functions:

• Lure: Move a Human to the Site of one of your Hiding Spots from an adjacent Site.
• Scare: Move a Human from the Site of one of your Hiding Spots to an adjacent Site.
• Attract: Add a Human into the game from their Rest Area.
• Extract: Remove a Human from the game into their Rest Area.

Start by placing the Wilderness board within reach of all players. The Wilderness board is broken up into six Sites: Crystal River, Pinehill Park, Maple Lake, Scenic Swamp, Witch Ridge, and Crooked Chasm. Place two Human tokens into each Site—the Flavor of Human is specified. Near the board, designate Rest Areas, where Humans that are not currently in play reside. Also close by, place the Action cards and Event cards with designated discard piles.

Every player must choose a Cryptid and take the corresponding Cryptid card, Meeple, and Sighting cards. Each player is also dealt five Action cards to make up their hand and two Hidden Trait cards. Study them and choose which challenge you want to complete. Return the one you don’t choose to the box. Keeping your challenge in mind, players must now divide their Sighting cards into three equal Stacks. Each Stack will correspond to one of your Hiding Spot tokens. You may refer to these throughout the game, but keep them hidden from the other players.

Players must place their Hiding Spot tokens into different Wilderness Sites. You can’t put more than one of your own Hiding Spot tokens into the same Site. Now, we are ready to begin.

Gameplay

A game consists of five rounds. Each round consists of four phases: Dawn, Day, Dusk, and Night.

• Dawn: Humans will leave from, arrive to, and move about The Wilderness of their own accord—as directed by the round’s Event card. The First Player will draw the top card from the Event deck and place it face up for all to see and then resolve the listed effects from top to bottom to the best of their ability.
• Day: Cryptids can move Humans around the Wilderness in attempt to increase their Myth. You can do one of three things—listed below—and players will cycle through this three times in player order.
• Play an Action card from your hand.
• Discard an Action card from your hand to use your Cryptid Power (this can only be done once per round).
• Pass your turn to the next player.
• Dusk: An Encounter occurs at one of the Wilderness Sites! To determine where the Encounter occurs, find the Site with the most Humans that also has at least one Hiding Spot token. If multiple Sites tie for the most Humans, the First Player chooses which of those Sites the Encounter will occur. In player order, if you have a Hiding Spot token in the Site of the Encounter, reveal the top Sighting Card of your corresponding Stack. Now, calculate how much Myth you will gain or lose based on the Flavor of Humans that are in the Site. Then resolve the effect of the Sighting Card, set it aside, and place your Hiding Spot token on top of the Stack.
• If, during Dusk, you reveal the final Sighting Card in one of your Stacks, return the corresponding Hiding Spot token to the box—it will not be used for the rest of the game.
• Night: This is when the preparation for the next day happens. If you do not have a Hiding Spot token on one of your Stacks, you may move one of your Hiding Spot tokens to a new Wilderness Site. If you do have a Hiding Spot token on one of your Stacks, place it in a Site different from where the Encounter just occurred. Now you can discard any number of cards remaining in your hand and draw until you have five cards. Do this in player order, and then the First Player passes the First Player token to the player to their left, and they become the First Player.
• Repeat this process for five rounds. Then flip over the remaining Sighting cards in your Stacks and your Hidden Trait card.
• You get +7 Myth for each Real Deal card that was not revealed during the game.
• You can gain bonus Myth based on your level of completion of the objective on your Hidden Trait card.

The player with the most Myth wins! That Cryptid is the True Legend.

History

Tee Turtle was founded by Ramy Badie in 2022. What started out as a t-shirt company based in Baltimore has since grown to include plushies (the Moody Reversible Octopus!), games, and accessories.

In 2017, Unstable Unicorns launched via Kickstarter to great success, which paved the way for Unstable Games, which is Tee Turtle’s dedicated game studio. They’ve designed games like Here to Slay, and Happy Little Dinosaurs in addition to Twisted Cryptids, which was released in 2025.

Variations

There are two different expansion packs you can purchase and integrate into your base game. The Cryptid Culture expansion introduces Jersey Devil and Lizard Person as new playable cryptids. You can also start a cult! Enlist one of six cults to help do your bidding. It’s represented by a token in the Wilderness that can migrate around the board, gaining you Myth points and recruiting humans to unlock new abilities to help get ahead.

There’s also the Ness is More expansion, in which Nessie and Chupacabra join as Cryptids! New effects are also introduced: Strong Lure and Big Scare, which allows you to reach humans far across The Wilderness.