Yarr! Pirate Dice: A Kickstarter Game to Believe In

Five days. That's all you have left if you want to back a phenomenal, piratey, swashbuckling, fun board game on Kickstarter called Pirate Dice. Yarr. (Don't know what Kickstarter is? Read about it here.) If you're reading this too late, then you've already missed the boat, er, pirate ship, and I hope that you can get your hands on a copy soon, or ye be a scurvy dog! Sorry, this just isn't going to get old for me. I really wish I was a pirate.

Here's the deal, matey: At this year's Origins 2012, the husband and I got to try out a lot of new games and prototypes, and (with all due affection to the many games we tried), Pirate Dice is the game that we are still talking about and we desperately want to play. Right now.

Here's what you need to know about Pirate Dice and why you should go support it. Right now, me bucko!

Pirate Dice: Voyage on the Rolling Seas is a game that was designed by Clint Heron, an awesome gamer whom I am now proud to call a buddy. He came up with the basic concept for this game when he created a print-and-play version of RoboRally, called RoboDerby Express. Remember? RoboRally was that awesome game where the robots moved through the twists and turns of a factory trying to reach a goal that always was just one turn or belt away? This new dice-based version of the game was a massive print-and-play success, winning several awards, and causing my husband to visit numerous thrift stores in search of Disney Yahtzee, which he could strip for parts to make RoboDerby. Go, husband! (Down with Disney, the scurvy dogs!)

Well, for obvious lawyer-y reasons to do with licensing and blah, blah, blah, RoboDerby was never meant to be published. But thanks to Clint's ingenuity, he was able to re-imagine the game as a great, compact piratey adventure.

Here's how it's played:

Each turn, players secretly roll their custom dice to reveal directional orders for their pirate ships, which sit perilously in a sea full of pirates all wanting to get their hands on a treasure chest full of booty, bobbing in the current. The goal is to get a ship to the treasure first and safely deliver it back to the goal. The players, or captains, as I'll call 'em, yar, set the dice actions in order and let the chaos ensue as each captain carries out the orders for his or her boat. The ships are sailing across a gridded sea filled with obstacles and chaos, which is no place for pirate ships that want to move straight to the treasure. The result is that the pirate ships bump, bruise, and spin all over the board, and--if you're playing with me--piratey insults are flung, ya bilge rat! Ya raft-riding salmon smuggler! Ya rum-swigging hogshead!

Such a simple game can turn into a heated race that can flummox advanced players trying to calculate moves five steps ahead (if the mutinous dice don't destroy yer plans, arrr.). Or it can be a silly game for the family that encourages kids to work on their logic and spacial relations skills.

Overall, I adore this game. It isn't just the piratey theme that has me singin' a sea shanty, but the simple brilliance of a challenging, sometimes frustrating, laugh-outloud game. I not only played the prototype a few times at Origins 2012 (once until about 3am), I am also proud to be a backer on Kickstarter.

The good news is that the game is getting published. Clint and Gryphon and Eagle Games originally asked for $7,500 to get it published, and at this moment have raised $25,293! That means the game has reached both of its stretch goals, and people are excited about this game! You should be too. And that's the bottom line of this post. I'm not telling you to back this game because I'm counting on you. I'm doing this as a public service, because if you're one of the few gamers who isn't getting a copy of this game in the mail months from now, you're going to be a sad buccaneer.

Visit the Pirate Dice Kickstarter page here.

Arrr.