After a few games of this wonderful "Finstere Flure" with five - seven players, our group develop a variant scoring and "end of game" mechanism as below:

A. No use of first stage rule

From the very beginning, second stage rule is used, i.e. all eaten tokens are captured forever and cannot re-enter the board again.

B. All tokens which pass through the exit are given scoring points according to the sequence/order of the tokens out of the exit

The game will not end when a player has 2 out of 3 or 3 out of 4 of his/her tokens (depending on the number of players) passing through the exit.

In contrast, the game will end when all tokens have either been captured by the monster or passed through the exit.

The scoring rule is:
i. The last token passing through the exit is given a scoring point of 1;
2. The second last token is given a scoring point of 2 (i.e. 1 + 1) and vice versa until all tokens are given scoring points.
3. The player with the most scoring points is the winner.

Example:
For a game of 6 players (red, blue, yellow, green, black, violet), there are 18 tokens (each player with 3 tokens). At the end of the game, let's say 10 tokens successfully pass through the exit and the other 8 tokens are captured by the monster.

The scoring points are given according to sequence/order of the 10 tokens out of the exit:

1st token (blue colour) - 10
2nd token (yellow colour) - 9
3rd token (green colour) - 8
4th token (red colour) - 7
5th token (black colour) - 6
6th token (black colour) - 5
7th token (blue colour) - 4
8th token (green colour) - 3
9th token (violet colour) - 2
10th token (yellow colour) - 1

The total points scored by the players are therefore:

1. blue - 14
2. green - 11 black - 11 (a tie)
3. yellow - 10
4. red - 7
5. violet - 2

The winner goes to blue.

Theoretically, there is a possibility that no token is captured and all 18 tokens pass through the exit eventually. Then, the 1st token out of the exit would score 18 points, the 2nd token 17 points,..... the last (i.e. 18th) token 1 point.

Advantages of this variant scoring and "end of game" mechanism:

a. With the second stage rule in use all the time, the playing time of the game is limited to 60 minutes even for 7 players.

b. With the "end of game" happening only after the last "suviving" token passing through the exit, the course of the game is more satisfying or complete for all the players involved. It also prevents the players from conducting "hostile" actions against the leading players.
Indeed, as theme of the game is on "escape from the monster - the common enemy", cooperation and teamwork are good points in the game.

c. With the last token passing through the exit can also score a point, the mechanism contributes to the heat of competition as well as sportsmanship. When there is luck factor in this game, the "best" player may not always be the winner. It is good to see that all players cheer and greet each other as a "team" when the last token passes through the exit.

Please try and all comments are welcome.

King Kwok
from Hong Kong