The Night Cage Player Counts, Solo Play, and Shrieking Hollow

The Night Cage plays from one to five people, but the labyrinth never holds fewer than four Prisoners. What changes is who runs each Prisoner, and at five, the size of the board. This last lesson covers every count, the Shrieking Hollow expansion, and where to find new Prisoners.

Always four Prisoners

In a 1 to 4 player game there are always 4 Prisoners. A 5-player game has 5. Each Prisoner gets its own Prisoner Status card, a candle-shaped Prisoner token in the same color, a Starting tile, and one Nerve, whether a person is sitting behind it or not.

So the setup is the same for one, two, three, or four people. The tile counts change only at five, when a fifth Prisoner joins.

Solo: one player, four candles

A solo player controls all four Prisoners and takes a turn for each. Everything else plays as normal.

Solo, you see and decide everything, so every Lights Out rescue, Key handoff, and route to the Gate is yours to plan. Two tips:

• Track each Prisoner’s state. Lights Out, Nerve, and Key status are easy to mix up across four Status cards. Check them at the start of each turn.
• Plan in pairs. Relighting and passing Keys both happen between two adjacent, connected Prisoners. Keeping Prisoners in loose pairs gives you both options without bunching all four in one Wax Eater’s line.

For more, see our best solo board games.

Two players

Each player controls two Prisoners, with a full set of materials for each. The rules recommend taking both of your Prisoner turns back to back, rather than alternating, to keep things simple.

Talk through the plan for all four Prisoners, not just your own pair. Our guide to two-player cooperative board games covers what makes co-ops shine at this count.

Three players

Each player controls their own Prisoner, and the 4th Prisoner is shared. Set up a full set of materials for it, as if a fourth player were seated. The host or owner of the game starts with the 4th Prisoner marker. When the 4th Prisoner’s turn comes, whoever holds the marker takes it, then passes the marker to the left, clockwise, for the next round.

It helps to agree on the shared Prisoner’s job each round, such as anchoring a Gate or carrying a spare Key, so the marker holder carries out a group plan.

Four and five players

At four or five, each player controls one Prisoner. Five players changes the setup in three ways:

• Use the 7x7 side of the board. One to four players use the 6x6 side.
• Set up a 5th Prisoner.
• Adjust the tiles. Remove 1 Key and 2 Wax Eaters from the pool, leaving 7 Keys and 10 Wax Eaters. The opening tiles on top of the Draw Stack also change to 5 T tiles, 3 four-way tiles, and 2 straight Passages. Use the Discard Board’s 5-Prisoner side.

Five means one more Key to collect and one more candle to bring to the Gate. With more voices at the table, watch who is making the calls. Our article on co-op games without a quarterback problem has ideas, and the Eerie Silence variant is one built-in answer.

The base game and Shrieking Hollow

The Night Cage is published by Smirk & Dagger Games, under its lighter-games imprint Smirk & Laughter Games. It was designed by Chris Chan, Chris McMahon, and Ross Saunders, with art by Chris Chan.

The Night Cage: Shrieking Hollow is the expansion, released in 2024. You need the base game to play it.

At a high level, Shrieking Hollow changes what a Pit means. Falling or leaping into a Pit on the main board no longer drops you back into the labyrinth. It sends you down into the Hollow, a new sideboard, where a creature called The Other waits. Over the game, The Other rises out of the Hollow and attacks, wiping out the parts of the maze it reaches. Shrieks herald its approach, and Watched Keys work like Key tiles but pull every Prisoner in the Hollow back up to the main board.

The box also adds more monsters, called Night Terrors, with cards for choosing or randomly drawing which ones you face, and Pathway cards and tiles: tools and chances found in the maze, each with a cost. The rules say Pathway cards can be added to the base game too. The full rules are on the official Dized rules page.

Finding more Prisoners

The Night Cage has no tournament scene and no organized play program. Mastery means beating the hardest setups, and the best way to get there is more tables.

• Local game stores. Many run open game nights where you can bring your own game.
• Game cafes. Our guide to what a board game cafe is explains how they work, and finding a board game night near you covers where else to look.
• Teach it yourself. The teach sheet fits on one page and covers setup, the turn, and how to win.
• Indianapolis. Our guide to public game nights in Indianapolis lists where to play now. And join the Indianapolis list for first word on local learn-to-play nights as The Ludarium grows.

For more games in the same spirit, see our list of the best cooperative board games.