Gatefall is a strategic miniatures game of tactics, deck building, and resource management. The base game mode is designed for two players to fight head-to-head. Arena mode lets 2-8 players fight one another in a battle royale setting.
In a two player game, players choose which team to control, the fantasy team consisting of Brog, Gildri, and Randar, or the Wasteland team consisting of Exile, Firebug, Penny, and Lost Boy.
At the beginning of the game, each player has the same deck of ten cards, which contain seven “1” cards and three “0”cards. The first player draws five cards, and adds the total of their values. That number represents the number of actions the player can use for their team. Actions can be moving one space or attacking. These actions can be spread across the entire team, or used by only one character, depending on a character’s traits.
When a character is killed, the player who killed that character earns the number of victory points printed on the character’s upgrade shop card, and the player whose character was killed draws a “zero” card from the “zeroes” pile for every victory point listed on the killed character’s upgrade shop card and adds it to their discard pile. The killed character respawns in their base immediately, but that character cannot move or attack on their next turn, and effectively loses a turn while respawning.
The first player to reach ten victory points wins the game.
—description from the publisher