This was a weekend project. I started by doodling some drawings while thinking about a game mechanic. As I couldn't find anything cool, I decided to start with a story and picked one written by a student of mine (Ydris). This story had opened up an interesting discussion about sharing and the benefits of a planned economy rather than an every-man-for-himself economy. Recalling this theme, all the mechanics fell into place. All that was left was to make a board.
<aside> 🥸 The board was intended to be placed on a Samsung S7 tablet (hence the openings). Thus, all the rotating parts, the timer and the dice roll became digitally taken care of. It was lovely, but since not everyone has a 7" tablet at hand, I turned the thing into a classic board game.
</aside>
On a small and wet planet (the autumn planet), nothing grows but rice. A child dreams as he looks at another small planet, far away in the sky (the summer planet). But he is forbidden to even look at it as it is said to be inhabited by monsters. One evening, he decides to disobey, jumps into a small spaceship and lands on the forbidden planet. There he meets another child and learns that only potatoes grow on this arid planet where no monster has ever set the foot. The two children become friends and decide to convince their respective people to get closer...
The two planets have come together. A little too close, perhaps, since the birth rate exploded the following year. With no more room to grow rice and potatoes, the people decide to colonize a third, perfectly uninhabited planet, where it is very cold. Every day, a brave team (one representative from the autumn planet and one from the summer planet) travels around the colony to distribute rice and potatoes. Several difficulties complicate this task: frozen lakes and a large river force them to take detours, and time is running out. On this planet, the day lasts only 10 minutes. It is thus necessary to finish the distribution during the day under penalty of dying in the cold of the night while the community dies of hunger with great desire of potato.
At the beginning of the game, a 10-minute timer is started.
All the walkways and the barges are placed in the initial position as shown in this diagram (or randomly, if possible).
Pawns and movement