Boulder Bluff: A Climber's Card Game of Bold Moves and Bluff
Created by Brecht from Boulder Bluff
A fast-paced and easy-to-learn 2 to 4 players card game where you have to top Bouldering routes to win!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Leveling Up Boulder Bluff: New Rules, Playthrough Video, and Game Shows🧗!
7 months ago
– Thu, Aug 28, 2025 at 07:01:45 AM
Hi Boulder Bluff Fans!
We’re back with a fresh update. There’s a lot to share, so let’s dive right in!
Updated Rules + Fun New Variant
We’ve heard your feedback loud and clear. We went back to the drawing board to make the rules more clear.
You can now download the updated rulebook at the middle of the webpage here (in English, Dutch, German or French).
With that out of the way, here’s the fun part: we’ve added a brand-new injury variant we’ve been keeping in our back pocket. If there was ever a perfect time to share it, it’s now!
In the standard game, injuries deduct from your final score. In this variant, injuries instead affect your climb strength during the game, which changes your strategy and makes every decision on the wall a little more intense. Give it a try. We think you’ll love the twist and it basically doubles the replayability of the game!
Wondering what the latest (and final) rulebook version is? It’s the one with ‘Credits’ at the end of the rulebook.
FAQ Section
We’ve added a FAQ section on the website. Go there if you have questions about orders or shipping, or if you need more gameplay clarifications. We will update this section in the future.
How to Play Video
We’ve put together a full playthrough video to help you jump right into the game. It covers:
Going over the components
Example rounds so you can see the flow in action
A deep dive into the climb cards with effects (yes — the animals! 🐿️🦅🦊) for both the base game and those in the Animal Kingdom Expansion Pack.
It’s not a studio-quality production. But it’s clear, useful, and will have you ready to play in no time. No need to watch it all in one go. Skip to the sections you find most helpful.
Watch the How to Play Video (35 min) at the very bottom of this webpage.
Come Say Hi!
If you’re heading to a game show in Germany or the Netherlands this year, come say hi! We’d love to meet you in person.
Spiel Essen: Saturday 25th & Sunday 26th of October - we don’t have stand but will be there and local pickup is available for your orders. We will communicate a place and time directly after you’ve placed your order.
Spellenspektakel in Utrecht: Saturday 8th & Sunday 9th of November – we’ll be there with a stand at the Indieplein!
Final Remarks
I’ve grown so much on this journey, and while there were a few bumps along the way, one thing is crystal clear: this is only the start. I’m committed to always doing better, learning, and creating games that you’ll be proud to have on your table!
Your support is what brought Boulder Bluff from an idea to a reality. I don’t take that for granted for a second!
Thank you for believing in me. Together, we’ve built something special… and we’re just getting started.
Stay bold 🪨🔥 Brecht Designer of Boulder Bluff
Fulfillment has started 📦+ Rule Book Clarification (Video) & Expansion Pack Deck 📜
8 months ago
– Sun, Aug 03, 2025 at 11:12:25 PM
The games have been shipped 📦!
Finally, fantastic news for all of you backers! All games have been shipped last week by our distribution partner and they should arrive with you this week. You should have received an email from ‘Meeples Distributie’ with a tracking code. Important to note: the invoice accompanied on that email is not correct and only for administrative reasons, so you can ignore that.
We want to emphasize once again that we’re incredibly grateful for your support and patience throughout this process 🙏. It has been quite an adventure with many mistakes along the way. Most of those, we were able to fix before getting the final version out there, but at least one spelling error managed to get through (uh oh…)!
This was a first production by a tiny team and while we always strive to do our very best, we are aware it’s really challenging to offer a game at the quality large publishers do, with higher costs and lower resources being a reality. So with that said, we’re exceptionally grateful and proud at the same time! The game is not perfect, but it's very fun! Without your support, Boulder Bluff would have never existed. We will be launching more games in the future, so if you have any ideas, let us know.
For all of you with Local Pick up: these will be sorted this month. We will reach out to you personally.
Rule Book Clarification + Expansion Pack Deck 📜
While the rulebook that comes with the game is almost exactly the same as the one online, we changed a little bit of wording to make things more clear, and we updated some of the images.
In addition to the 'How To Play Video' at the end of the webpage on https://9000games.com/portfolio/boulder-bluff/ we've also made a short video to discuss 3 important aspects of the game:
How injury tokens work
How does the 'single color bonus' work
The end of the game and scoring
Consult it here if you need a light bulb moment 💡
For those of you who have the Expansion Pack (included in the Early Bird deal), these 8 extra animal cards are pretty self explanatory, but we made a short online overview to clarify them! Especially the ‘Sneaky Snake’ brings in some advanced play! Please download it here: https://9000games.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AnimalKingdomRulebook-scaled.png
Some other remarks
Game Mat Size
We’ve had some questions about the Game Mat size. The Game Mat is deliberately kept small to have a compact playing experience. Simply place the cards on top of the indication frames, and it should be a perfect fit! As for the frames itself: we didn’t want to make them larger so that the cards match them exactly as it would throw off the balance in the image.
Expansion Pack
We highly recommend first playing the game without the Expansion Pack to get a feel for it, before moving on thet expansion pack. It adds some more action and complexity, which will be more easily digested if you get the basics right first!
The winners of various competitions will be contacted this month to receive their copy of Boulder Bluff. Keep an eye out for more chances to win an expansion pack or a Boulder Bluff game!
If you have any questions, simply shoot us a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!
Thank you again for your support and for being part of this incredible journey! We will be back with more, very soon! ❤️🙏🧗🏼♂️
Shipping for Boulder Bluff Is Only 2 Weeks Away 📦🥳
9 months ago
– Mon, Jun 23, 2025 at 03:17:57 AM
Hi Boulder Bluff Backer,
Summer is here, the sun is out, and you want to play Boulder Bluff! We totally get it, and we're ready to make it happen. Thank you again for your patience, your support, and just for everything🙏🏼!
Here's some good news: the games have arrived at our distribution partner's warehouse and are almost ready for shipment! We are currently making sure that all add-ons like the Chalk Bag, the T-shirts, the extra token, etc.. get to the warehouse and are correctly allocated to the right order. This means we'll need just a little bit more time before we press the big 'SEND IT' button that ships out your pledge to you.
As previously announced, this will happen at the beginning of July.
Questions & Website
Just for your information, if you have any questions at all, feel free to reach out via whatever channel works best for you 😃! We will do our best to reply to you as soon as possible.
You can always check out the website here for more information. And for those who got the Animal Kingdom Expansion Pack, be sure to download the little extra digital rulebook!
Big boardgaming & cool climbing regards,
The Boulder Bluff Team 🧗
Boulder Bluff is coming your way 📦 + New Website live!
11 months ago
– Mon, Apr 28, 2025 at 04:37:52 AM
Hi Boulder Bluff Fans!
Fantastic news, the games are on their way to our facilities! We have received the final samples and the production quality is exactly what we expected it to be. It looks and feels great!
We also passed several safety & risks tests (European Standards), so that we're 100% certain we're offering all of you a high quality and safe product. We'd like to thank all our partners for their work and effort! We can safely confirm that the beginning of July final fulfillment to you will begin.
You can find things like the rulebooks in your local language (English, Dutch, French & German), or the extra rules which come with the Animal Kingdom Expansion Pack, for those who got it. We will use this website to give any updates on Boulder Bluff, and who knows....maybe some more games in the future ;)?
BackerKit Survey
Don’t forgot to fill out the BackerKit survey so we have the correct shipping information. If you've lost your link, use your Kickstarter email to fill in the survey. Still any issues? Reach out via Kickstarter private message and we'll help you.
On the tariffs for US customers: we're working with our partners to come up with a solution, but since a lot can change between now and the moment we ship, we don't want to get into specifics. Please bear with us, and we will give an update before we start shipping.
Have a fantastic day!
The Boulder Bluff Team
Shipping Update 📦 & BackerKit Survey
12 months ago
– Wed, Apr 09, 2025 at 06:36:40 AM
Hi Boulder Bluff Fans!
We wanted to keep all of you updated. Unfortunately, we’ve had to move the estimated shipping date from May 2025 to July 2025.
Right after the campaign, some changes were made to the box and the cards themselves. While these changes were minimal, and made the game better, it did trigger another back-and-forth with our supplier and required a lot of double-checking to make sure we were all on the same page and that the information was correct.
We understand this is not ideal, and believe us, we would rather have things move more quickly rather than slowly. Unfortunately, even with us calculating some ‘unforeseen delays’ in our estimations, things are not entirely in our hands. The only thing we can do is work together with our partners to get the games to you as soon as possible.
The good news is that the games are estimated to be on the water before the end of this month headed to the European warehouse. From that point onward, we expect fulfillment to go swiftly so that you get your Boulder Bluff copy as soon as possible! Just in case, we're guiding for July.
BackerKit Survey
Don’t forgot to fill out the BackerKit survey so we have the correct shipping information. If you've lost your link, find it here.
Tariffs situation (for US Backers only)
We wish we could say more, but it’s extremely unclear on what will happen for our US backers. Kickstarter and BackerKit are helping creators navigate the uncertainty. What we do know, is that we'll do whatever is in the best interest of our Backers to keep the price as low as possible. For full transparency, this is what Kickstarter shares about the tariff situation:
We are working with both teams to get information on how to address this situation, but it changes on a daily basis. For now, with the goods not being on the way to the backers, we can still optimize the timing of how and when to ship to minimize the impact as much as possible. Please bear with us as we will be back with an update on the tariffs soon.
