Gods, Pirates and Monsters
Created by Lesley Flanigan, Joo Youn Paek, James Daher, and Rolf Anderson (with additional consultation from Charles Pratt).
OVERVIEW:
Explorers race across the ocean discovering treasure, islands, sea monsters, storms, dolphin, pirates, whirlpools, and the ferocious god of the sea, Poseidon, along the way! A game of luck, strategy, and exploration in the spirit of Checkers combined with Sharks and Minnows.
This game was developed by designing a core mechanic based on the concept of shared goals.
Review of Gods Pirates and Monsters by Frank Lantz:
"Wow! Great game!
There are some really original and interesting formal
structures here, especially the modular board that
gets revealed over time and the special Poseidon
player role.
The core mechanics work great. The dynamic board
creates a palpable sense of exploration and discovery.
One of the highlights of the game is the emergence of
multi-step, chain-reaction routes across the board
which leads to some nice suspense, and some surprising
and funny "Rube Goldberg" style moments.
There's no denying the amazing quality of the game
materials - they are lovely and very satisfying to
manipulate, and add a lot to the overall game
experience.
There was also plenty of interesting interaction
between the players, with some good opportunities for
strategic defensive maneuvers.
I playtested this game with some pretty serious gamers
and we all really loved it. Over the course of several
play-throughs the biggest shortcoming of the game
emerged. Mainly: the game has a tendency to run too
"fast". It is fairly common for multi-step routes to
emerge that allow for players to jump across the board
before Poseidon, or any other players, have any chance
at all to catch up. The games that are over too
quickly are very disappointing.
This problem could have easily been fixed through
additional playtesting and tuning. I think maybe the
dolphin should be +2 rather than +3 and there should
be fewer of the positive tiles in the mix. Because the
overall game is so strong it's a shame not to
fine-tune and polish the system.
This is a great game, and very impressive work. Nice job!"