At PAX Aus 2026, I sat down with Ravensridge Emporium, the passionate team behind tabletop RPGs and GM-less games Cartograph, Caught in the Rain
Now, they have a brand new game hitting shelves, TTRPG-crossed board game, next year: One Thousand Rats Devour a City — and thanks to the devs, we got our hands on an early copy.
READ MORE: PAX AUS 2026 | Our Top Tabletop Picks From The Expo
How do you devour a city?
The goal of One Thousand Rats Devour a City is simple: devour the city. Play solo, or with up to four players, and take on the role of “Alpha Rats” in a swarm set to overwhelm the fictional gothic city of Ravensridge.
Your role as Alphas is to direct the activities of all the rats in the city. You have an overall goal for victory, but also smaller individual goals. For our first game, we had to “wage war and drive the humans from the city”, while my personal goal was to “get revenge” on an enemy faction. Another Alpha in our crew wanted to “learn magic”, these are open-ended goals that you decide from the beginning of the game, then agree as a group when they are completed.
While you’re doing so, you have to manage your swarm’s population, as well as food and resources. Population is rats, Food feeds rats, and Supplies help rats on missions. The best gameplay piece for me was managing your resources and collaborating as a team. Each round, one of your rats is the swarm leader, and they decide the course of action. But your swarm’s population, food, and resources are shared among all players. So, when you’re planning your next move, you have to constantly work with the other Alphas, while furthering your own schemes.
Even in our first game, this led to great moments: one Alpha wanted to gamble on a hard mission to take control of a hex for their personal goal, even though it could draw the ire of an enemy faction. Our council of rats was mostly on the same page, but I can see many opportunities for sneaky subterfuge.
One bite at a time
As part of devouring the city of Ravensridge, you have to take sectors of the map. Each hexagon is a location within the city, such as a tavern, an orphanage, a great hall, or a civic building. Some are easier for rats to take control of than others, but the best meals might be the hardest to reach.
Every round, you draw an event card that impacts the city as a whole. It might force conflict with another faction in the city, or affect your horde’s food stores. One that cropped up in our game caused Cthulhu-esque monstrosities to rain from the sky and occupy hexes. This was a mixed blessing, because it limited our options for where to go, but the humans were so preoccupied with these magical zombies that they didn’t notice our scurrying.
When you’ve decided to attack a hex, your Alphas need to decide how they will contribute to the effort. This is based on a relatively simple RPG system tied to your chosen Alpha. Each has core stats of Scrap, Sniff, Squeak and Scurry. On one mission, we were taking over an underground fighting ring. Our Alphas chose to search under the seats for food, rally other rats to rise up and swarm the humans, and challenge the champion fighter to a duel – yes, human vs rat, don’t think too hard on it. These missions are more roleplay-focused, where one player shares their goal, and the other players decide the stakes. So that fight might result in an injury if they fail. Or rallying the rats might draw the attention of a nearby faction.
This mix of roleplay and mechanical boardgame-ness works really well, giving rounds a natural ebb and flow.
One among thousands
If you’ve seen a Ravensridge Emporium game before, the quality of the art in One Thousand Rats Devour a City should be no surprise. Every location has a wonderfully thematic location art card. Every Alpha has a quirky, cartoony vibe that made it super easy to choose favourites. Even the main map board is covered in little scratches and bits and rats hiding in every shadow.
The game copy that we were testing is an early sample, with some tweaks to be made in the final print version — specifically legibility and colour contrast. But it’s great to see the team is already addressing these on the final build.
In our small adventure, our crew of Alphas led our swarms and drove the humans out of the slums, then set our sights on the ritsier parts of town. This meant more attention from the humans, but also delicious upper-crust food to eat. It’s a great game that I can see played in one setting in a smaller corner of the city like we did, or extended out over multiple sessions.
One Thousand Rats Devour a City is currently on Kickstarter, and at the time of writing has already surpassed 300% funding.
If you’ve got a party of like-minded rodents that can scratch and sniff their way to property ownership, I highly recommend giving this one a look. One Thousand Rats Devour a City is scheduled for release in 2027.
An advance copy of One Thousand Rats Devour a City was supplied by The Ravensridge Emporium
