Surrounded by water, no dry land in sight and a worn down sailboat that probably won't last another year. There has been some rumours circling around that if you follow the constellations in a particular order you will find the land you have been looking for!
Game Elements
Seasonal maps, objectives and Sky Cards
Player's Sheet
This game was developed to accompany my Master's dissertation, where the objective was to start the design from the illustration and to incorporate astronomy in the gameplay. The game was a BGG (Board Game Geek) page where the files can be downloaded from, alternatively the games can be downloaded from here.
The goal of the game is for the player to reach dry land before the small sailboat is destroyed, in the game this translates in finishing the game within 16 turns or less. To navigate the water the players relay on celestial navigation to reach their objective.
Overwatered by Anni Paz
The illustration had a big role while designing Hydra's Voyage, it served as the starting point and the overall anchor for the entire development process. This incorporation was initially hard but became easier after analysing the illustration and then further dissecting it allowed to come up with some interesting design decisions.
From the illustration it is possible to come up with some ideas such as the use of celestial objects as a way to navigate, the game can be set in a small sailboat and in a reality where the water levels have drastically risen, the change of the landscape after that event can create dangerous situations that can be added to the gameplay, and there is the possibility to add resource management into the game.
The Gameplay and the mechanics
The objective of the game is to complete four Seasonal Objectives Cards before the all the available turns run out while managing various resources. The structure of the game follows a year with the four seasons (Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter). At the beginning of each season the players draw a corresponding Seasonal Objective Card, this card has the destination for that season highlighted.
With this information the player place the corresponding Sky Card in the correct map to get the coordinates for the star they need to follow during that season. Each of the Sky Cards gives the players the location of the goal, and where North is on that season based on the constellations.
At the beginning of each turn the players have to choose how to use their three action: Fish and collect water, plant crops, and move the ship one space in the map. Once the actions have been decided they need to be carried out without changing them, if the player reaches their objective before completing all of the actions their turn automatically ends and they pass to the next season. Since the players are surviving in the sea, at the beginning of their turn they also need to spend one Water and one Food (Crops or Fish) from the inventory.
Move
For each action point the players choose to allocate to this action they can move one space in the map (both orthogonally and diagonally).
Planting and harvesting Crops
Planting crops is a direct exchange from water to crops. The crops aren't available instantly they take time to grown, in this case, a full moon cycle (in the game this is represented with the passing of 4 turns). When the players reach the turn where the crops are ready they are ready to be harvested they can add them to their inventory.
Fishing and Water collection
These two resources are connected to each other, since the people aboard Hydra use a bucket. Translating this into a playable aspected resulted in the players rolling a D6 to represent the water/fish ratio inside the bucket, with this roll the players get two distinct values the face value and the bottom value, for example 5 and 2. With this roll the players are able to choose which is going to be allocated to water and which will be allocated to fish.
Water = The value shown in the die
Fish = Half of the value shown in the die, in case of uneven divisions rounded down
Using the previous example. The players choose to allocate the 2 for water and the 5 to the fishes, meaning that the players add 2 in the Water tracker in the inventory and 2 (5/2=2.5=2) in the Fish tracker.
The fishes are the only resource that can perish, after 2 turns the players discard the unused fish, but they can choose to use one additional water to preserve a fish for an additional turn.
The unknown
The map has multiple sections that are represented in a darker grey, these are known the Unknown. In these spaces players can be rewarded or lose valued resources and turns, or there can even exist some event take forcibly makes the players change directions.
These were added to the game to add an extra replayability element to the game, there are two distinct lists with events. The players at the beginning of the game roll a D6 to decide with which list they are playing with, rolls between 1 and 3 use List A and rolls between 4 and 6 use List B.
Maps and Turn Tracker
Inventory Tracking
Seasonal Objective Cards
Sky Cards
How to find the North
THe art
The illustration that kick off the design of the game was done after visiting downtown Lisbon in a rainy day and starting to creating an imaginary setting of "How would this look of it was flooded?".
In the final version of the game the art style utilised is a simpler version of the original illustration, more focused in having the clear definition of the elements and reducing the interference on the experience the game aimed to provide the players. The decision to have all the artwork done in greyscale comes from the nature of the game, in this case a Print-and-Play game, that needed to be easily available for home printing.