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Salvage Hidden Treasures is an upcoming Kickstarter board game that has a great look. That's perhaps not surprising consider one of the four people behind the game has a background in graphic design. In fact Salvage Hidden Treasures was initially conceived as a design project. Even at this prototype stage you can appreciate the clear and minimalistic design. But as Shakespeare never said 'No game can get by on looks alone.' So let's delve a little deeper under the surface.
Deep Dive
Salvage Hidden Treasures sees you and up to three other able sea persons attempt to collect the most valuable loot. You will need to balance heading out across the map with increasing your fleet, selling treasure to make room for more valuable treasure and whether to dredge deeper for more spoils.
To start the game players will take one wooden boat, £1,500 cash and lay out a 4X4 grid of stacks of tiles. Players will choose a corner to start from and the game will commence. On your turn you are able to move and take one action with all of your ships. Most of the time this will be exploring or picking up treasures.
To explore you pay the cost on the back of the card and then flip it over. Costs can vary but don't always pay out more than you put in, so sometimes leaving that treasure face up is the way to go. Picking up treasure also costs so you do need to keep an eye on expenditure. Sometimes you will flip over an event which you will need to resolve right away. Then there are some treasures which have special game changing rules like changing the value of other cards.
Heavy Load
Of course your boat is not a tardis and so can only carry a certain amount of treasure. Each treasure has a weight and each boat in your fleet gives you a load capacity of 10. Therefore the treasures that give the best pay out per weight ratio will be the ones you want to hunt down. You will be pushed to sell treasures early too as you need cash monies to buy new boats and fund more discoveries. Each new boat cost's a whooping £3,000 but on the flip side along you to achieve much much more on your turn.
The game lasts for 16 rounds, but can go up to 20. They may sound like a lot, but remember the round tracker moves forward after everyone has had one turn. This makes for a pacy game with little downtime.
Buying and Selling
At the end of the game the only figure that counts is the value of treasures you still have. Cash won't win you the game, so you aren't going to be able to sell all the heavy treasures and relax. Despite being relatively light weight, Salvage Hidden Treasures has some good decision spaces. Prioritising when to take treasures and particularly balancing the weight and value will be crucial. I can see these aspects appealing to gaming families, as this is a crucial skill in more complex games.
Salvage Hidden Treasures will also have broad appeal for new gaming families with the clear graphic design and simple ruleset it applies. Just check out some of the gorgeous pictures that our resident photographer has taken!
Salvage Hidden Treasures
Salvage Hidden Treasures is heading to Kickstarter on Oct 27th and you can follow this link to be notified about launch. You can also head over to their website to learn more about how the game came to be and take a look at the rules.
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