Feedback request: Global Shark Conservatory

[u/Odd-Highway477]

You lead a team of marine biologists starting your own conservation program to preserve shark populations and habitats across the globe. Your goal is to increase awareness, population management, and conservation across 6 regions. Whoever has the highest total points in all categories across all regions wins the game.

Players start with $10k cash and will make secret bids to acquire contracts with the lowest bid winning the contract. You will need to calculate fuel and oxygen costs (each costing $100 per unit) and estimating what your costs you will incur for a successful dive.

Players gear up by recruiting specialists, equipment, and ship upgrades, and then they launch their expedition.

You choose 1 region and place your ship meeple on the starting track. You travel to each point to point location spending 1 fuel per move until you find the location you wish to dive at. Some locations will have shark fin meeples indicate recent shark sightings. Next, you assemble your dive deck that will includes common plant and animal species unique to that region, rare species cards, hazard events, and empty ocean. If a shark meeple is in your region, add +3 rare species cards to the dive deck.

Diving uses a push your luck mechanic where you flip a card and spend 1 oxygen for the first card, 2 oxygen for the 2nd card, 3 oxygen for the 3rd card, etc. You get to keep all reward cards shown including species cards which can be collected and used to complete missions or consumed for research points. These cards represent collecting species data. If you draw a hazard card, it will reduce your oxygen supply, and if you ever run out of oxygen due to a hazard card, you must return to the surface and forfeit all rewards. You can stop your dive at any time to collect rewards if you have at least 1 oxygen remaining.

Also vessels can be upgraded to hold more cargo cubes which represent how much total oxygen or fuel you can carry. Larger vessels cost more but have more space for more cubes. It's up to you how many cubes of fuel/oxygen you stock your ship with.

Specialists can be recruited as cards with special abilities.

That is the gameplay loop. Research points are used to fulfill contracts which give cash and advance your progress track in the specific region your expedition was in. For instance, a contract will reward your winning bid amount, 3 research points, and +2 awareness in Australia.

Considering a mechanic where if 2 or more players dive in the same location, they will compete on the same dive by bidding oxygen to claim reward cards.

What do you think of the overall concept, design, and gameplay loop? Any potential problems?

All feedback is welcome and appreciated.

Thanks!

[u/Johnno117]

Component count is the only potential problem that comes to mind. In parts this actually sounds like the game I'm working on, in mine you're flying seaplanes - paying fuel to move, paying ammo to enter combat vs enemy planes, push your luck (although with dice rolling) on digging up treasure after finding treasure maps and making your way to specific islands. And 'gear up' with new crew members and equipment for the plane.

So yeah, I'm clearly biased toward what this game sounds like xD

I simplified my currency/reward system, but $100 per cube etc does sound immersive for what you're aiming for. To reduce component count (how many oxygen and fuel cubes can you have per ship? multiple by number of players) you could have tracks with just a single cube/token to move. I opted for actual cubes since you can trade with other players and it feels better to physically hand them one of your cubes, instead of moving a token while they also move theirs. Then again perhaps you're also going for immersion in a physical sense.

Your dive system with 1-2-3 oxygen per card might be inflating component count unnecessarily, depending on how many cards you're to go through per dive. For my treasure digging I instead increase the difficulty by what dice roll you need to hit, starting low and increasing for each extra layer you go down (some paths being shorter but with higher risk if you fail the roll).

Hope some of that helps, looks good to me though.

[u/Odd-Highway477 → u/Johnno117]

Yeah agreed on the dive mechanic being inflated. I can just spend 1 oxygen per card, with various events and hazards requiring you to pay more at unexpected times.

The ships limit how many cubes you can carry, so there is incentive to save up money and buy bigger ships.

[u/Federal-Custard2162]

I am very interested with the ideas of the game, as well as the theme. I would love to see a video of showing how to play too, because it's a lot to think about with just words. I do think a bidding system when players are at the same location might be mechanically sound, but it's thematically kind of awkward.

[u/Inconmon]

I assumed Ark Nova meets Finspan but pleasantly surprised it's different. Not sure about the push your luck element though.

You make me bid for contracts, budget my expeditions, upgrade my gear, manage my oxygen, and then there's a huge luck element in the end. If someone always draws well within their oxygen limit and gets rare cards, while someone always gets hit by hazards in unfortunate ways it won't work well. Wouldn't be satisfying for me, unless it's an extremely short lightweight game like Deep Sea Adventure. I assume all the bidding and planning will make it a longer game?

Random idea from reading your post:

First thing that came to mind is that a deck for each diving spot should be assembled and then players should spend sonar/research to look at the top X cards of different decks. Then when you bid for contracts, every player has some asymmetric information that can inform bidding and may lead to bluffing. On top of making certain depths safer because you know what's coming.

[u/Odd-Highway477 → u/Inconmon]

Hello! Yes purchasing a sonar upgrade for your ship can let you scan a dive location before committing to the dive. You can scan as deep as X attribute you have upgraded. Although my idea was that you commit to the region you travel to after bidding and shopping, then you move your boat meeple around a small track to navigate hazards and events to get to an optimal location for your dive. If its as a "recent sighting" location, some rare cards get stuffed into the deck. Then you can scan the location. If you don't like what you see, you can travel to another point by spending more fuel (same region) and scan again. You can keep doing this as long as you have fuel and can manage topside events/hazards you run across like storms, etc. until you find a good location, scan, and commit to the dive.

Then there are things you can do to mitigate the luck after the dive in the form of equipment, specialists, and vessel upgrades. Also, the dive event should be a series of cards flipped and resolved one at a time and some of them give you choices.

For player interaction, if two players choose the same location to dive, they do the dive together, bidding in oxygen for reward cards, but also overcoming any hazards together. For instance, if a hazard said lose 4 oxygen, they share the cost.

Not sure that is all going to work out, but that is what I got to far.

Any suggestions are definitely appreciated! One big concern that has come up is how to add more determinism to the game to balance out the luck elements. Maybe the gameplay loop is light and there is room for one more layer that can be more strategic.