I didn’t expect to be so sad over a rusted water barrel. But that’s what happened during my first playthrough of Collapse, a hauntingly beautiful little game by Jordan Draper and Mandy Jara. It’s not about collecting points or besting your opponents. It’s about who we become when the world ends—and more importantly, who we choose to be when we’re rebuilding it together.

The setting is post-collapse. The world, as we knew it, has unraveled. Maybe slowly, maybe all at once. That part is up to the table. What’s left are fragments—memories, rituals, tools, relationships. And we, the players, are survivors. Not just survivors of hunger or weather or violence—but of change. Each of us plays a character trying to create meaning in the aftermath. Trying to stay human in the quiet echo that follows disaster.

The game unfolds through shared storytelling. Each card offers a prompt—a memory, a scarcity, a moral dilemma, or a fractured remnant of the old world. You speak in turns, weaving your stories into the collective reality. One prompt asked what I had lost in the Collapse. I said books. Not just any books—my grandmother’s recipe journal, with handwritten notes and dog-eared corners. Another player leaned in and told me she’d found it, buried in soot, with only the dessert section intact. That moment—so small, so fictional—felt more real than some conversations I’ve had all week.

There was another card later, about how we deal with grief as a community. We all went silent for a moment, not because we didn’t know what to say, but because we cared how we said it. Someone suggested we sing together each new moon. Someone else said we burn dried herbs in memory. I said we each write the name of someone we lost on a stone and leave it by the water. By the end of the round, it felt like a ritual that had existed forever.

We ended our session quietly, with candles still burning and tea long gone cold. The air was full of stories. Some joyful. Some fractured. All true, in the ways that matter. Collapse is not a game for rushing. It’s for rainy afternoons, quiet evenings, or late-night talks where you lose track of time. If you’re looking for a game that helps you reflect, connect, and imagine a future stitched together by community, this is a beautiful place to begin.

Here is a link to the Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/indytoylab/collapse-a-deck-building-game-of-doomsday-prepping