Premise & Overview

So yeah, I'm making a board game. Of course, I can't just dive right in and start talking mechanics - a game needs a reason to play, some kind of context or story for what you're doing and why you're doing it. As I continue to work on the game I'm sure this description will evolve, but this is the core I'm starting with. 

In North, the world is facing an ice age which is slowly descending from (you guessed it) the north. As the cold and snow creep south, contact is being lost with the people and cities enveloped by the ice.

A lot of people have disappeared. At first it was thought they stayed behind and were buried in the snow or froze to death, but now reports are coming in that people are simply getting up and walking north, into the darkness. There are also rumours of chilling monsters moving south, but that's ridiculous... isn't it?

You are someone who lost a family member or a friend to this mysterious march northwards. You are among the few who have decided to investigate, banding together and heading north to search for your friends and family, dealing with bandits, wildlife, and the chilling cold. The farther north you travel, the colder and more dangerous the landscape becomes.

Along your travels you discover that the monsters are real. They're terrifying creatures that feed on heat, chilling the area around them. It's not clear how these coldbringers are linked to events, but the monsters appear to be keeping people in their lairs. To rescue your friends and family, you'll need to track down and confront the coldbringers in their lairs in the far north, past the forests and the frozen river in the rocky ice wastes.

In more concrete terms: North is a cooperative game focusing on exploration and survival. Along the way you'll need to manage your three vital resources: heat, endurance, and health. These can be gained or lost in various ways, the most important of which the cold: every night you lose some heat. If you lose all your heat you lose endurance instead, and if you're out of endurance you lose health. Various items,  events, and choices will add or subtract from any of these - for example, you might get injured and lose health but not heat or endurance. Losing all your health is bad, but I haven't settled on exactly what happens, but you won't be out of the game for good because that's no fun.

To win, you'll need to rescue the loved ones of all the players from the lairs of the coldbringers, located in the northernmost region. In order to be able to survive and triumph that far north, players will have to work together to build their inventories and skills to take on the monsters. 

This is the core concept and basic functionality of the game. I'll be posting more specific information and mechanics soon, so keep an eye on this page!