A shadow rises over ancient Japan. Each night, storied terrors emerge from a dark gate to ravage the countryside. As all hope seems lost, a group of heroes stand together to fight back the Oni and their endless hordes.

Onimaru (Japanese for demon circle) is a fully cooperative game where you and your allies take up arms to defend a village against otherworldly invaders. You will win the game if you are able to destroy the three villainous Oni. However, if you fail to do so within the predetermined number of days (rounds), the Gate will remain open forever, and all of Japan will succumb to the shadow!

Each round begins with a preparation phase, where new enemies will appear from the Gate, and the Heroes may develop their skills. After that, each player will roll a set of dice and work together as a team to decide how to allocate, reroll, and sequence those dice. These dice can be used to attack your enemies directly, or combined in specific sets to execute powerful techniques. Finally, the Oni will roll its own dice to damage the Heroes, summon forth new Hordelings, and command those Hordelings in play to attack their targets.

Out of the box, you can choose to play the Heroes as recommended…or, through use of GameTrayz technology, you can customize and store your own unique Heroes! Each Hero can be built with any 2 of the 16 included Techniques (and their accompanying cards), any 3 of the included 24 Skills, and any of the 8 included Talents. Out of the box, over 1.9 million different combinations are possible!

The enemies also feature similar modularity. In each game, you will choose one of the three Oni to face of each Circle (difficulty tier). Each Oni is not only its own board, but also adds its own unique Attack cards and Hordeling cards to their respective deck. When an Oni is defeated, those Attack and Hordeling cards remain in those decks, as it passes its abilities and dark allies along to empower the next Oni!