Land Ho!

The Island, The Treasure, The ... Fruit?

For the latest Game Design project, I was once again recruited by Jordon Mattison, Alex Golenishchev and Sidd Panchal. After wrestling Jordon away from his polygons (his first game was “Battle Squares”, followed by our last game “Battle Hexagons”. I think there was a pattern emerging...) Alex presented an idea of pirates on a desert island collecting treasures, and Natives on that island collecting resources. 

After a fair amount of brainstorming the inner workings of the game we all split off to create… The Island Adventure!

4, 8, 15, 16, 23... Wait wrong island!

On the island you play as either a Pirate or a Native. The available roles depend on the number of players.

• 2 Players: 1 Pirate, 1 Native
• 3 Players: 2 Pirates, 1 Native
•  4 Players: 2 Pirates, 2 Natives

Each player chooses one of 4 starting locations (2 for Pirates, 2 for Natives). Players travel around the board using a 6 sided dice. They can travel in any direction they want to collect treasures from the “Items” spaces. Once a Player has 5 cards in their hand they are unable to draw any more until they discard one first. Players must take their chances, while they could easily discard a Banana to find a Gold Chest, they could also just find Sand.

If 2 players land on the same space they can steal cards from one another. They fan their cards out to their opponent (keeping the face of the card hidden) and both players simultaneously draw 1 random card from the opponent’s hand.

After 20 rounds the players tally up their scores to figure out which player has attained the most valuable items. This can be done in two different ways at the same time.

        1.   Using the value system

The value system uses the value of each item as displayed on the cards. The value of the item depends if the player is a Native or a Pirate (Natives have no use for a Gold Coin, just as Pirates have no use for a Coconut). The value of the players cards are only calculated if it is necessary for a combination or a player has no combination.

The item values are as follows:

Items                                    Pirate Value       Native Value

Native Knitting Set                         0                           4

Coconut                                        1                            5

Banana                                          3                            7

Watermelon                                   5                            9

Pineapple                                       7                           10

Dragon Fruit                                  8                           13                                                                                              

Pirate Scope                                 4                            0

Ivory Carving                                5                           1

Treasure Map                               7                            3

Gold Coin                                     9                           5

Gold Chest                                   10                          7

Diamond                                      13                           8

Sand                                             0                           0

Sailor's Skeleton                            1                           1

Water                                            2                           2

Fire                                               3                           3

Cloth                                             4                           4

Rusty old pistol                              5                           5

Gun powder                                  6                           6

Rum                                              7                           7

                                                                                                                                             

Cards Natives will want

Cards Pirates will want

Cards equally useful/useless by Pirates or Natives

         2.    Using the combo system

The combo system is used to boost players score if they collect a certain combination of items, much like in poker with the “4 of a kind” and “Royal Flush” and all that. Although our Island Adventure uses quite a few more combinations that poker, they are:

Combos                                                                                                      Value
5 fruit - "Eating Good Tonight"                                                                x1.5 hand score
4 fruit, 1 Dragon Fruit - "Eating Good Tomorrow"                                    x2.0 hand score
2 Watermelon, 2 Pineapple, 1 Dragon Fruit - "Eating Good All Week"     x3.0 hand score
2 Banana, 2 Pineapple, 1 Dragon Fruit - "Eating Like A King"                 x5.0 hand score
5 treasure - "Good Haul"                                                                           x1.5 hand score
4 treasure, 1 Diamond - "Excellent Haul"                                                  x2.0 hand score
2 Gold Coins, 2 Gold chests, 1 Diamond - "Amazing Haul"                       x3.0 hand score
2 Treasure Map, 2 Gold Chest, 1 Diamond - "Perfect Haul"                      x5.0 Hand score
4 Coconuts 1 banana - "Suggestive Eating"                                             40
4 Ivory Carving 1 treasure map - "Promise of Fortune"                            40
5 Watermelons - "Melon Party!"                                                              50
5 Gold Coin - "Rolling in Gold!"                                                              50
4 Gold Coin, 1 Gold Chest - "Money, and a place to put it"                    60
Gun Powder, coconut, fire - "Explosive Nuts"                                          Combo counts as 15
Fire, Cloth, Rum - "Molotov"                                                                    Combo counts as 20
Sailor's Skeleton, Gold Chest - "Dead Man’s Gold"                                +5 to hand
Gun Powder, coconut, cloth, rum, fire - "Island Demo-kit"                        30
5 Sand - "I like sand"                                                                                26
Rusty old pistol, Sand, Fire, Water, Gun powder - "Fixed Pistol"               30
5 Native Knitting Set - "Staying Warm"                                                     100 if Native
5 Pirate Watch glass - "A Way Home"                                                       100 if Pirate
Dragon Fruit, Diamond, 3 Rum - "Lucky Mans find"                                 120

Some rules can be confusing at this point such as the “Combo counts as 15” or “+5 to hand” so I explained it in the general rules document.

Players can have combos within their hand (such as the “Molotov” which will count as 20 points), following that, the player adds the value of the last 2 items in their hand to get the total value.

In some cases players can have multiple combos. For example you are a pirate with a “Molotov” and “Dead Man’s Gold”, in this case the Molotov counts as 20 points, the Sailor’s skeleton is 1 point, the Gold Coin is 9 points, and the “Dead Man’s Gold” adds 5. Your total would be 35 points.

One Minor Issue

The only thing I don’t like about our game is how (as I've noticed with a few of games each group has made) is the rule that “After a number of rounds the game ends”. There’s no explanation as to why the game ends and it takes away any end goal, making the whole experience seem pointless. But at the same time I believe the game would be far too massive if we kept the collection going until someone was somehow able to escape the island.

My goal for the future is to try and put a stop to this pointless "end of game" rule. It’s easy enough to tweak the theme to incorporate some threat that will end the game in so many rounds. That would make much more sense than just ending the game.

The ending of the game can be easily fixed by adding some bad guy wanting to destroy the island and either paying him off (Pirate) or getting help from the island gods (Native)... There I more or less fixed it, but at the moment it's not worth reworking the items around this idea.

Aside from that I think this game is great and I hope everyone enjoys their own Island Adventure!