Ice Pirates - Unfinished thoughts

by Dan Isaac

Even though I have submitted IcePirates to the IGDC5 competition, I am not sure if I quite consider it as a completed game yet. There are some aspects of it which feel a bit flat to me yet, and some things which I feel could probably use more testing and be improved upon. This page will list just a few random thoughts that I have had about changing IcePirates. I may also list some ideas which have been rejected during the design process. This page is a work in progress, so I am not really sure what all will end up in here.

Eventually, and perhaps based on feedback I receive from IGDC5, I may go back and update the rules for IcePirates. But who knows, if the feedback is positive, I may just have to leave the game as-is. We will need to see. But in the mean time, here are those random ideas that I mentioned:

• Each player may begin with some agreed upon number of pips worth of ships forming their fleet. They may select almost any number of any sized ships so long as they have no more then four ships of any one size.]
  • This would allow flexibility in the game length, space required, etc.
• Use two opaque stashes plus an additional stash (clear or opaque) for the Treasure Islands. - The third stash would be the treasures. Larges still do not count as treasures.
  • More islands to search would be good, however the lack of opaque stashes, is an issue.
• Use one stash of pieces as the treasure islands (no nesting) and use a deck of playing cards (with two of the 2's removed) to represent the contents of the island. Each island receives three cards, except the Large islands, which receive four cards each.
  A - 9 = No treasure
  10 & J = Small treasure chest = 1 treasure
  Q & K = Medium treasure chest = 2 treasure
  Note that this will bring the total treasure up to 24.
  Therefore the winning goal numbers must be adjusted also.
  • This gives you more islands without needing to worry about opaque stashes. However, it adds new equipment and rules about what cards mean what.
• I had thought of letting shots reduce the size of the ship struck. This could cause them to need to jettison some treasure if they become too small to carry it. That treasure would then be lost.
  • This would help to bring the game to an end, as the amount of treasure needed for a victory would decrease as treasure was lost this way during the game.
• The above method also allowed me to add a feature of building and repairing ships to the game using treasures to pay for them. However this added more unneeded complication to the game, and used an already scarce resource of treasure.