Description

Z Gate Crashers is a 1 to 5 player monster hunting adventure (card game), where the goal is to survive an onslaught of invading monsters. Using various combinations of weapons and bonuses, players try to dispatch the monsters.
You and up to 4 friends are a band of mercenary monster hunters. Your job is to contain the evil abominations that come crawling out of large filthy stinking holes in the ground.

You and your team are deployed behind protective energy units called GATEs.
These GATEs are powered by a new energy source that’s harvested from killing the nasty monsters, called Soulbits.
Soulbits are your lifeblood and your currency. You use them to keep your GATE energized, and you protected from attack.
You can also trade in the soulbits you earn, for more weapons and bonus cards, to help you defeat even more nasties.

The object is simple, you’ve got to survive.
But more than mere survive, a successful GATEr needs to thrive by harvesting as many soulbits as possible.
The Player with the most soulbits at the end of the game wins.

The game ends when either all of the players or all of the monsters are dead.

Monsters are distributed in Wave cards, that show the different types, distributions, and amounts of each invading wave of monsters.
During their turn, each player draws a wave card, and using monster cards and monster-life tokens, they line each up to create the monster attack track.

Monsters typically emerge at the hole and during initiative, take a varied number of steps to get closer to the gate and do damage.

The player (typically) has first-attack initiative. Using acquired weapons and bonus cards, in various stacked, chained, offensive, and defensive combinations; the player tries to kill as many nasties as possible and collect those soulbits.

The monsters next get their move and attack actions, using initiative tokens.
An initiative token is placed under the monster card that will next act.
The initiative token (typically) moves sequentially down the track (and back around), with monsters getting 4 such actions in a “Normal Difficulty” game. The location and move-direction of the initiative token along the monster track can be altered based on certain Wave Cards.

When a monster card has initiative, all monsters on that card get to move (one step closer to the gate) and then if able, attack.
All monsters attack when at the gate but do so in a variety of different ways and with differing effects.
The player rolls to save against an attacking monster. A successful roll gains the player a bonus soulbit, but a failed roll will incur (sometimes cumulative) damage to the gate.
During initiative, some monsters also get a bonus attack that they take regardless of their distance from the gate.

If a player survives, play moves on to the next player to see how they do.
A recovery session is granted at the end of each round, allowing players a chance to buy more loot, recover from various effects, and trade with other players.

Game difficulty and experience are controlled in the distribution of wave cards, allowing for highly dynamic and varied gameplay.
When wave cards run out, play continues in the same order until either all players or all monsters are dead.
The player with the most soulbits, at the end, wins!

—description from the designer