The Botch

“In the criminal underworld, there are good days and there are bad days. Today, everyone is having a bad day.”

In The Botch, a motley collection of criminals are picking through the wreckage of a massive heist gone massively cock-eyed. There’s a fortune’s worth of diamonds flying around between the hands of even the small-timer crooks scudding around the Boss’ empire, and she’s not happy.

Meant to evoke those chaotic crime movies where everything’s going wrong, The Botch is a party game of hidden information and ridiculous messes. It’s a game about bluffing and nerve, about pulling off a con, and about grabbing the jewels and running. In The Botch, you’re going to lie, cheat and steal, and if you’re really lucky you’ll get out of this with your skin intact.

The Botch is a hidden-information bluffing game designed to keep things reasonably chaotic and make it hard for players to get an overwhelming edge through experience and memorisation. It’s a game to get people into gaming, where things going embarrassingly wrong is part of the design.

The Botch contains 5 Basic roles and 5 Basic items, which are designed to be played as an entry-level stable game. As you become more comfortable with the game you can add more roles and more items, choosing from an additional 7 Advanced roles and 7 Advanced items.

First to 10 diamonds ends the game or last alive wins.