Design the treasure map to make the most of the random route you were given at the start.
Mapped Out
Background
This idea was hard to “finalize”. It started with a very simple one-liner idea: “Let’s turn the typical board game with a map on its head!”
Instead of having a pawn on a map and trying to walk the optimal route … you start with a fixed route (set of directions on cards) and must design the map to get the most out of your route.
Very unique, very promising, but … how do you make this into a game? How do you give players a fixed route they can’t change (too much), without making players just feel powerless or their route unfair? And how do you reward players for “walking a good route through the map”, without having very complicated scoring rules?
After several iterations, I figured out the simplest system possible to accomplish all this. As usual, the solution was to kill several birds with one stone: when you add a tile to the map on your turn, that same tile also shows an action to get to know more about your route. Players need to constantly balance building a map that gives them loads of points, with actions that will actually reveal their secret route they’re supposed to walk at the end.
It took a few tries, but finally the ideas came together and we get this nice little game as a result!
Also, a lot of my original ideas were decisively moved to expansions, to really keep the base game small, textless, and kid friendly. If you think the base game is a bit too simplistic or straightforward, be sure to try out the expansions.
Credits
The fonts used are Vanilla Whale (headings) and Source Serif (4) (body text). Everything else is mine.
Support
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