Pieces of Night is a solo game set inside a dream. The protagonist is a silhouette that splits into its parts and then puts itself back together. Each detached part has a single trait, and that trait is much stronger than it is inside the whole silhouette, because a pure emotion weighs more than a diluted one.
The goal is to reach the end of the dream before you wake up, and to get there whole. To do that you have to split, send the parts off on other paths, bring them back together and separate them again, while the night moves on and the noises of the real world threaten to wake you.
Pieces of Night is a game for a wide audience, played as single sessions of 20-30 minutes, with choices that matter and surprises that force you to adapt.
| Choice | Decision | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Experience | Halfway between puzzle and adventure | The noises and the face-down cards stay, but a game is won by playing well, not by luck |
| Audience | Wide | Rules you can explain in 5 minutes; Oddities and double faces weigh a lot, maybe as an advanced mode |
| Box | To decide after testing | The prototype must not depend on the miniatures |
| Continuity | Single sessions | All the variety comes from themes, the shape of the path, and tone |
| Silhouette | It is you, the player | No character to introduce: the dream belongs to the player |
| Ending | Getting there is enough | No final boss: the Waking Door opens with the whole silhouette and 5 Memories; the tone only says how you wake up |
With a wide audience, the four parts are the first thing to check. If testing shows they are too many to follow, the base version can start with three and add the fourth in the advanced mode.
The whole silhouette has 2 in every trait, while a detached aspect is worth 4 in its own, because focusing on one thing amplifies it.
| Part | What it does in the dream | In the silhouette | Detached |
|---|---|---|---|
| Courage | Faces the Shadows and the obstacles of the nightmare | 2 | 4 |
| Imagination | Transforms obstacles, opens doors that were not there, lets you fly | 2 | 4 |
| Memory | Recognises places and finds Memories | 2 | 4 |
| Calm | Keeps Wakefulness away and brings the dream back towards the sweet side | 2 | 4 |
When an aspect detaches, the silhouette loses that trait until it comes back. That is where the cost of splitting comes from: on the main path you are weaker exactly while the detached part is stronger.
Every split also has a thematic consequence. Send Calm away to get past an obstacle and the silhouette is more exposed to noises; detach Courage and a nightmare on the path becomes hard to bear.
The silhouette is a symmetrical ink blot, like a Rorschach test, made of 4 vertical wedge miniatures that attach to each other, one per part, so the table shows at a glance which parts are missing. Each wedge stands on its own when detached, and its shape tells you which part it is.
The silhouette walks along a path of face-down cards, and from some forks side loops branch off that break away and rejoin further on. At a fork you can send an aspect into the loop while the silhouette carries on, and the two parts meet again where the loop rejoins.
Whole silhouette ──▶ Fork
├─ the silhouette carries on ──▶ Path ──────────┐
└─ an aspect detaches ──▶ Side loop ─────────────┤
▼
Rejoin: it reassembles ──▶ New fork
Every obstacle can be passed in two ways, and the choice is always the player's: whole, by adding up several low traits, or by detaching an aspect that reaches a high threshold on its own. A door that does not exist asks for Imagination 4 and can only be passed by detaching Imagination. A Shadow in a corridor you know asks for Courage 2 and Memory 2 and can only be passed whole. Many obstacles accept both ways, and there what decides is what each choice costs you afterwards.
Each half-hour you have 2 steps (3 in REM) to share between the silhouette and the detached parts. Each step moves one of them onto the next card of its route and reveals it: an encounter, a place, a Support. The cards stay laid out face down on the table, so the position of each part matters and routes can join up. If you fail to pass a card you stay on it, and try again with the next step.
The game ends when the last Half-hour card comes out: the 7:00 alarm goes off, and if you have not yet reached the End of the dream you wake up without having finished it.
Challenges against the Shadows are resolved by spinning a 12-segment wheel, and the value of the part facing the challenge says how many times you can spin it.
Every enemy has a strength, meaning the damage needed to beat it. If you run out of spins first, the obstacle stays and the Tone drops by 1; if you beat it, the Tone rises by 1. A lost clash never costs you a part.
| Segment | How many | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Hit | 4 | 1 damage |
| Double hit | 2 | 2 damage |
| Memory | 1 | 1 damage and +1 Memory |
| Blank | 3 | Nothing |
| Counter | 2 | +1 Wakefulness |
Courage challenge · Shadow strength 3 (3 damage needed)
| Enemy (strength) | Whole · 2 spins | Detached · 4 | REM · 5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small Shadow (2) | 48% | 85% | 92% |
| Shadow (3) | 17% | 62% | 77% |
| Nightmare (4) | 3% | 35% | 55% |
| Great Nightmare (5) | 0% | 15% | 31% |
Counter: the Shadow hits you, +1 Wakefulness (you risk waking up). If you run out of spins without beating it, the obstacle stays and the Tone drops by 1.
With this wheel a strength-3 Shadow is beaten 17% of the time whole (2 spins) and 62% of the time by detaching Courage (4 spins), so the choice to split really carries weight. Enemies range from strength 2 to 5, and the strongest are almost impossible whole.
The Counter ties the wheel to the noises: the more you spin, the more you risk waking up, so even with 4 spins available it can pay to stop.
Every enemy belongs to one of four families, and each family is the opposite of a part: it can only be faced with that part. The strength shown is for the neutral dream. In a sweet dream (+2 or +3) it drops by 1; in a nightmare (−2 or −3) it rises by 1.
| Family | Fought with | Enemies (strength) |
|---|---|---|
| The Fears | Courage | The shadow under the bed (2) · The black dog (3) · The rising water (3) · The thing behind the door (4) |
| The Walls | Imagination | The bricked-up door (2) · The endless corridor (3) · The grey room (3) · The concrete sky (4) |
| Oblivion | Memory | The forgotten name (2) · The faceless teacher (3) · The changing house (3) · The ticket inspector (4) |
| Restlessness | Calm | The ringing phone (2) · The running crowd (3) · The endless exam (3) · The train that never stops (4) |
The double-faced cards show the difference too: in the sweet dream the teacher smiles and only asks you to remember an answer, in the nightmare she stares at you with no face. The tone becomes a loop this way. Winning raises the Tone and makes the next encounters easier, losing lowers it and makes them harder, and Calm is also what breaks a downward spiral.
Among the path cards there are also 8 Supports, roughly one every five cards: things and figures of the dream that help you instead of standing in your way. You keep at most 2 in front of you and use them whenever you like, without spending steps, then discard them.
| Support | Linked part | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| The dog you had as a kid | Courage | +2 wheel spins in a challenge |
| The paper wings | Imagination | Skip an obstacle without facing it |
| The hand-drawn map | Memory | Look at the next 3 path cards and rearrange them |
| The corridor light | Calm | −2 Wakefulness |
| The train ticket | Any | Re-spin a Blank or a Counter |
| The voice calling your name | Any | A detached part returns to the silhouette at once, wherever it is |
| The warm blanket | Calm | The next noise does not count |
| The faded photo | Memory | +1 Memory |
Supports have two faces as well. In the sweet dream they work in full; in the nightmare they are faded and give half the effect, or ask for a price, for example +1 Wakefulness. Linking them to a part adds one more choice: the dog only helps Courage, so it is worth keeping if you know Courage will be going off alone.
Each turn is worth half an hour, from 23:30 to 7:00, for a total of 15 Half-hour cards split into 5 cycles of 90 minutes, as in real sleep. Counting in hours would have given 7 or 8 cards, too few to build a game on.
| Stage | What changes |
|---|---|
| Light sleep | Base rules: you can split and reassemble normally |
| Deep sleep | No dreaming: the aspects outside stay still and safe, the silhouette advances on its own and cannot split |
| REM | The real dream: aspects are worth 5, you get one extra step, but every half-hour a Shadow card comes out |
| Micro-awakening | At the end of a cycle: every part still outside lowers the Tone by 1 |
The distribution follows the real one, with deep sleep concentrated in the first half of the night and REM growing towards morning.
| Cycle | 1st half-hour | 2nd | 3rd |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (23:30) | Light | Deep | REM |
| 2 (01:00) | Light | Deep | REM |
| 3 (02:30) | Light | Light | REM |
| 4 (04:00) | Light | REM | REM |
| 5 (05:30) | Light | REM | REM |
This gives the game an arc of its own: it starts slow and controlled and ends fast and risky, right when splitting pays most. For randomness the cards are shuffled within each cycle, while the cycles stay in order.
Reality carries on outside the dream: 6 Noise cards are shuffled into the night deck and, when they come out, they resolve without using up a half-hour. Each has an intensity from 1 to 3, from rain on the window (1) to the neighbour coming home (2) to a car alarm (3).
A Wakefulness track runs from 0 to 10, and at 10 you wake up: the game ends at once, without the dream being finished. At every noise add:
The silhouette can spend a step to turn over in bed (−1 Wakefulness), but only if it has Calm inside: detaching Calm means giving up the way to stay asleep. The first card of the deck is never a noise.
The tone of the dream is not decided at the start. It changes through the night depending on how you play, on a track that runs from −3 (nightmare) to +3 (sweet dream) and starts at 0.
Every place has two faces, the sweet version and the nightmare version of the same spot, and when you reveal it you read the one that matches the tone. In the sweet dream thresholds drop, you find more Memories and noises weigh 1 less; in the nightmare thresholds rise, some cards take Memories away and noises weigh 1 more.
Memories are keys rather than points: some path cards are thresholds you can only pass by spending them, and they are found almost only in the loops. Splitting is therefore not optional, and in the finale REM pushes you to detach the parts while victory asks you to come back whole, with the noises punishing anyone who still has something outside.
The tone you arrive with tells what kind of night it was: in the sweet dream you wake up rested, in the nightmare with a start. Anyone who wants to improve can use the arrival time at the End as a score.
The variety comes from what dreams already do on their own: they mix places that do not belong together, change rules for no reason and turn from sweet to nightmare.
Difficulty is set by the length of the path: 10 cards to learn, 14 normal, 18 hard.
The first prototype only has to show whether the core holds up, meaning whether splitting and reassembling stays an interesting choice for the whole night, so it stays small and text-only.
| Component | Quantity |
|---|---|
| Place cards (2 themes, double-faced) | 20 |
| Fork and loop cards | 10 |
| Half-hour cards | 15 |
| Noise cards | 6 |
| Shadow cards | 6 |
| Oddity cards | 6 |
| Silhouette + 4 parts, Wakefulness and Tone tracks | 1 set |
| Support cards | 8 |
| Clash wheel | 1 |
English terms used on this page, with the original Italian from the design doc.
| English | Italian |
|---|---|
| Silhouette | Sagoma |
| Courage · Imagination · Memory · Calm | Coraggio · Immaginazione · Memoria · Calma |
| Memories (the keys you collect) | Ricordi |
| Fork · Side loop · Rejoin · Path | Bivio · Giro laterale · Rientro · Sentiero |
| Half-hour · Step | Mezz'ora · Passo |
| Wakefulness · Tone · Noise | Veglia · Tono · Rumore |
| Shadow · Support · Oddity | Ombra · Supporto · Stranezza |
| Hit · Double hit · Blank · Counter | Colpo · Colpo doppio · Vuoto · Contrattacco |
| Sweet dream · Nightmare | Sogno bello · Incubo |
| Waking Door | Porta del risveglio |