Description

In Gulag, you take on the role of a loyal or disloyal worker in a totalitarian regime, the former trying to complete a Canal and the latter trying to sabotage the same.

As a loyal worker, you win by finding other loyal workers and play work cards to add work to the Canal. As a disloyal worker, you win by finding other disloyal workers and play strike cards to prevent work from being added. The Canal is completed if enough work cards are played.

The game starts with each player drawing one worker card, looking at it and giving it to the player to the right. Each player knows the loyalty of one other.

The workers secretly select one work card or one strike card each. The supervisor then decides whether to supervise one of them. If supervised, the worker must replace the selected card and select the other (opposite) card instead.

The commissar shuffles and discloses the cards and add the played work cards (if any) to the Canal. When all players have played the role of the commissar, the game ends.

The semi-hidden information where each player knows one player and is known by another player creates a paranoid gameplay. "He knows my loyalty but which is his loyalty?" "Should I play according to my goal and hope to escape supervision or should I play against my goal and hope to get corrected?"

There are many questions but whom can you trust to answer?