Step 1
Deal the fold-cards
Each player draws a hidden fold-card. One is the Saboteur, the rest are Cartographers racing to complete the paper map.
Cooperative deduction · Southbank, Melbourne
Fold the truth out of every whispered lie at the table.
Pavorisk is a hidden-role board game where three to seven players share one folded-paper map, trade half-truths, and try to unmask the saboteur before the last fold falls. Designed, printed, and play-tested a block from the Yarra.
- 11,400+
- Games played at our tables
- 38 min
- Average round length
- 4.8 / 5
- Rating across 900 players
Our story
A game folded by hand, one crease at a time.
Fold 01
It started on a Southgate café table
In 2019 we prototyped Pavorisk on torn napkins over long blacks at a Southbank café. The folding mechanic — where players physically crease the shared map to hide or reveal clues — came from a bad origami habit that refused to leave the studio.
Fold 02
Every component is real paper
We reject plastic minis. Each Pavorisk box ships with 64 laser-scored fold-cards, an eight-panel modular map, and a linen-finish score ledger. The tactile crease is the game — you feel a betrayal land the moment a facet folds shut.
Fold 03
Play-tested five nights a week
Our Downie Street studio runs open tables Tuesday through Saturday. More than nine hundred players have shaped the current edition, and every rule change is credited on the inside of the box lid.
How to play
Six folds from setup to the final reveal.
Pavorisk teaches in about six minutes. Here is the shape of a full round, from the first shared crease to the moment the saboteur is unmasked.
Step 2
Build the shared map
Players take turns folding one of eight panels onto the table. Every crease locks a route — or quietly breaks one.
Step 3
Trade half-truths
During the whisper phase you may share exactly one true clue and one false one. Reading tells is where games are won.
Step 4
Call the crease
Spend an Insight token to force a player to unfold a facet. If you catch a lie, you steal their next turn.
Step 5
Trigger a cascade
Three sealed facets in a row set off a cascade fold, flipping the whole map and scrambling every alliance at once.
Step 6
Unmask the saboteur
When the final panel folds, everyone reveals. The table wins together — or the Saboteur folds the map into ruin.
The makers
The small crew behind every crease.
Five people run the Pavorisk studio on Downie Street. Between them they have folded, scored, and re-scored the game more times than anyone will admit.
Lead Designer
Marta Devlin
Invented the shared-fold mechanic on a café napkin. Runs Thursday play-test night and refuses to lose gracefully.
Player reviews
What the table says after the last fold.
A wall of notes left in our studio guestbook and sent in after game nights across Melbourne.
The moment the cascade fold flipped the whole map I actually gasped. Nothing else on my shelf feels like folding a betrayal into existence with your own hands.
Taught it to my parents in one evening and we played four rounds straight. The paper components are gorgeous and somehow survived my very clumsy dad.
I host a weekly game group and Pavorisk has been the table opener for two months. Short rounds, brutal bluffing, no two maps ever fold the same way.
Booked a studio table for my partner’s birthday. Hana taught us, made tea, and we stayed two hours past close. Bought the collector edition on the way out.
As a graphic designer I bought it for the art alone, but the deduction is genuinely clever. The riso-printed facets look even better in person.
Perfect weight of game — thinky without being fussy. My teens beg for it and I can’t say no when a round is under 40 minutes.
Fold night invites, straight to your inbox.
One short note a month: open-table dates, new collector editions, and the occasional print-and-fold mini expansion. No spam, unsubscribe any time.
Book a table
Come fold a game with us in Southbank.
Open tables run Tuesday to Saturday. Send a note to reserve a seat, book a private group, or ask about a workshop — we usually reply within a day.
- Phone+61 3 8652 4768
- Studio58 Downie Street, Southbank VIC 3006
- Email[email protected]
- Studio hoursTue–Thu 4pm–10pm · Fri–Sat 12pm–11pm · Sun–Mon closed
Table & edition pricing
- Open play-test nightTue–Thu evenings · 2 hrsAUD $18 / seat
- Private group table (up to 7)Fri–Sat · 3 hrs, host includedAUD $220
- Fold & design workshopMonthly · 4 hrs, materials includedAUD $95
- Collector edition boxLinen finish, numbered 1–500AUD $145