Hercules and the 12 Labors + Add On Pack
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🐸 Una rana saggia sa quando dividere l’ordine… e quando aspettare il salto giusto.
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Roll the dice. Choose which Labor to face. The Hydra regrows its heads, Cerberus bites, mood cards remind you who you were before becoming a hero. In the end, you'll know if you deserve Olympus.
WHAT IT'S ABOUT
The Labors of Hercules like you've never played them
Tyler J. Brown (designer of Hercules and the 12 Labors) builds a solitary experience around the most iconic myth of ancient Greece. Not a gamebook, not a dungeon crawler: a system of dice and cards that puts you in the shoes of Hercules during the darkest moment of his story, when he must achieve divinity by completing twelve impossible Labors. DavidSchneiderArt's art brings the brutality and beauty of classical myth to the decks and player boards.
Each turn you roll a pool of dice and assign them to activate divine abilities, confront legendary monsters (the Lernaean Hydra, the Stymphalian Birds, Cerberus), and overcome challenges at the ends of the earth. Each victory grants you artifacts (the Nemean Lion's Impenetrable Skin, Athena's Tool) that modify your arsenal. Mood cards reveal memories, emotions, and traumas: they can help you or break you. You accumulate divinity with each Labor completed. If you gain enough, you open the gates of Olympus. Otherwise, myth forgets you.
What they're saying abroad
A game that promises to transform myth into tactical choices. We'll see if the Labors hold up to replayability.
— FroGames
"A dice-driven solo adventure that blends mythology and tactical decision-making into a compact experience."
A dice-driven solo adventure that blends mythology and tactical decision-making into a compact experience.
— Envy Born Games
Hercules and the 12 Labors
The game is designed exclusively for solo play: there is no multiplayer mode. You fight against automated opponents (the Hydra regrows heads according to fixed rules, Cerberus attacks based on the monster deck). The experience is complete: no loss, because the game was created for this purpose.
FrogScore · FroGames editorial rating · based on rules, international reviews, and gameplay sessionsWhat's in the deck
Cards, dice, and the road to Olympus
The 12 Labors
Each Labor is a card with unique victory conditions: you must kill the Hydra before it regrows all its heads, steal the Golden Apples of the Hesperides without being discovered, capture Cerberus alive. You choose the order, but some become impossible if you don't have the right artifacts.
Dice and divine abilities
You roll a pool of dice each turn and assign them to activate abilities (brute strength, cunning, resilience). Some symbols unlock divine powers, others advance you in the current Labor. Dice are your main resource: manage them poorly and the monster will overwhelm you.
Legendary artifacts
Each completed Labor grants you a permanent reward: the Impenetrable Skin of the Nemean Lion (ignore wounds), Athena's Tool (modify dice), Hippolyta's Belt (extra ability). Artifacts accumulate and radically change your possibilities in subsequent Labors.
Mood cards
These represent memories, regrets, moments from Hercules' past. They are drawn upon trigger events and can give you bonuses (the memory of a mentor strengthens you) or penalties (the memory of your murdered family paralyzes you). They are the narrative heart of the game: they transform the Labors into a personal story.
Come si gioca
Video dimostrativo di gameplay.
🎲How to playThe rules in four steps▼
How to play
The flow of each turn
Each turn follows a fixed structure: roll, assign, resolve, survive.
You roll your dice pool (the number depends on the artifacts you've collected). You look at the results and immediately decide whether to keep everything or activate abilities that allow you to re-roll them.
Each die can be used to: attack the monster, activate a special ability, advance in the Labor, defend against an attack. Some actions require specific symbols or minimum values. Your choices here determine if you survive or not.
The Labor card activates its mechanic: the Hydra regenerates heads, Cerberus attacks, the Stymphalian Birds multiply. Each Labor has a unique system. If you meet the victory conditions, you win the Labor and move on to the next.
If you have completed the Labor, you gain divinity (victory points) and an artifact. If you drew a mood card this turn, you resolve it: it can give you permanent bonuses or temporary penalties. Then you choose the next Labor to face.
⏱️Your first gameThe chronicle, moment by moment▼
A game in five moments
What happens at the table
Not the rules. The experience.
Setup: you are already Hercules
You draw the first mood cards (your past), choose the first Labor to face (usually the Nemean Lion, the most accessible). You read the card text: you immediately understand that it's not a tutorial. The game throws you into the myth without epic explanations.
First rolls, first choices
You roll the dice and understand the dilemma: do you attack the monster or activate a defensive ability? Low dice aren't enough to wound, high ones might be useful later. The first mood card reveals itself: a family memory. It gives you a bonus, but the text strikes you. You didn't expect it.
The first Labor falls
You overcome the Lion and obtain the Impenetrable Hide: from now on, you ignore certain wounds. You choose the second Labor. Do you try the Hydra? Or do you go to steal the Golden Apples? You consult your artifacts, calculate the dice you need. You start planning a sequence of three Labors.
The Hydra surprises you
You thought you had control. Then the Hydra regenerates two heads in one turn and your plan fails. You have to burn an artifact to avoid losing. A negative mood card takes away a die. You realize that the game is not generous: either you adapt your strategy or you die here.
The gates of Olympus
You have overcome 9 out of 12 Labors. You have enough divinity to win, but the last three are the hardest (Cerberus, the Erymanthian Boar, the Augean Stables). You decide whether to risk it or stop here. You roll for Cerberus. The dice come up high. You made it. The myth welcomes you.
🐸Good to know beforeThree honest things, from friends▼
Good to know before
Three things to consider
Dice luck is real
It's not a pure strategy game: you can build the perfect plan and see it collapse because you roll three 1s in a row. Artifacts mitigate, but if you hate dice-driven games, this will frustrate you. It's the price of immersion in myth: even Hercules depended on the favor of the gods.
Mood cards are text, a lot of text
Each mood card has 3-5 lines of narration. If you're looking for a purely mechanical solo game (like Onirim or Under Falling Skies), here you'll find more reading than expected. It's the narrative heart of the game, but it slows down the flow if you just want to roll dice.
Replayability has a ceiling
12 Labors, free order, variable artifacts: the first 5-6 runs are all different. After that, you start to recognize winning combos and dominant strategies emerge. It's not an infinite roguelike: it's a concentrated experience that you exhaust in 10-12 games.
🏆Victory and defeatWhat the ending rewards▼
How it ends
Victory and defeat in the Labors
The game has a final victory condition (accumulating enough divinity) and immediate defeat conditions during the Labors.
Victory
- Accumulate enough divinity points by completing Labors (you don't have to do them all: you can win after 8-9 if you choose them well)
- Overcome a particularly difficult Labor that grants bonus divinity (e.g., Cerberus, the Hydra)
- Reach the objective score and unlock the gates of Olympus: Hercules becomes a god
Defeat
- Sustain too many wounds during a Labor and your health tracker drops to zero
- A Labor reaches its failure condition (e.g., the Hydra regenerates all heads, Cerberus bites you three times)
- Exhaust the mood deck without accumulating enough divinity: time is up, the myth forgets you
It's one of the few solo games that lets you experience Greek myth without 20-hour campaigns. You open it, play it, close it. And next time the Hydra will be different.
💬Frequently Asked QuestionsQuick answers before checkout▼
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQ about Hercules and the 12 Labors
What mechanics does Hercules and the 12 Labors use?
Dice allocation (you roll dice and assign them to actions), storytelling (mood cards build an emergent narrative), events (Labors trigger unique effects). It's not a dungeon crawler: it's closer to a narrative game with dice than a tactical combat game.
Is it really a solo game or can I play it with a group?
It is designed exclusively for 1 player. There is no cooperative or competitive mode: you embody Hercules and that's it. If you want a similar experience with multiple players, look at other titles. This is just yours and the myth's.
How many games does it take to "finish" the game?
The game does not have a legacy campaign: each game is self-contained. That said, after 8-10 runs you will have seen all the Labors, tested most of the artifact and mood combos, and discovered the winning strategies. It's not infinite, but it's not disposable either.
How much does chance weigh? If I hate pure dice games, is this for me?
Chance matters a lot: you roll dice every turn and the results determine what you can do. Artifacts give you re-rolls and modifiers, but bad rolls can ruin perfect plans. If you're looking for total control, this game will frustrate you. If you accept chaos as part of the myth, it's perfect.
Is it available in Italian?
The edition for sale is in English. The game is language-dependent (mood cards, Labor texts, artifact descriptions). There are currently no official Italian editions or validated fan translations.
The people behind the game
Who invented it, who designed it, who publishes it — and what else they've done.
Hercules and the 12 Labors is a solo card and dice game for 1 player, lasting 30-60 minutes, recommended age 14+. Designed by Tyler J. Brown and published by Envy Born Games, it uses dice rolling, storytelling, and event mechanics to let you embody Hercules on his journey to Olympus. Face the 12 Labors (Hydra of Lerna, Cerberus, Stymphalian Birds, Golden Apples of the Hesperides) by rolling dice and allocating them to activate divine abilities, collect legendary artifacts, and overcome mood cards that reveal the hero's past. Each game builds a unique narrative: you choose the order of the Labors and manage resources to accumulate divinity and open the gates of Olympus. Weight 2.4/5, ideal for those seeking a compact thematic experience without campaign setup. Available on FroGames.it.
Hercules and the 12 Labors + Add On Pack
Frequently Asked Questions
The answers you're looking for, no beating around the bush.
📸Do the images match the actual product?
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📦Does the content of the box match what is indicated?
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