Crucible is a solo, roguelike, world-building game. Solo because you play it by yourself. Roguelike because it uses random generation to create the map you explore, and because you're expected to play multiple "runs" through a dungeon called the Crucible with different characters. And world-building because as you play more runs you'll answer more and more questions about the Crucible itself and its place in the larger world.

To play you deal out a grid of cards and move a token across them, encountering different parts of the Crucible each time and writing on the card the kind of thing that's there. When a run ends you shuffle up all those cards and start again, but now some of those cards are pre-set -- the Crucible will never become predictable, but it will become familiar.

Meanwhile, with every run you're learning details about the Crucible, what it's for, and the kind of world it exists within. The more elements you encounter, the more you come to know. After a few runs you'll have all the lore at your fingertips.