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In another of our board game spotlights, Zatu Games de-lids its globular sight organs and directs their moistened domes towards SeaFall, the upcoming game from designer Rob Daviau and publisher Plaid Hat Games.
The Game
SeaFall, as pitched by Daviau himself, is like ‘Indiana Jones in the 17th Century’, presumably meaning that its screaming ‘HOW DID I GET HERE?!’ repeatedly at the sky and weeping over the fact that its wife won’t be born for another 300 years.
The game uses the hugely successful ‘Legacy’ format originally pioneered by Daviau, with previous title Pandemic: Legacy being widely regarded as the best board game ever created. Legacy titles stand apart by being ‘single play’, allowing players’ actions in one session to affect the next, sometimes making them rip up and discard elements of the game, unlocking new areas, introducing new rules and leading to a definite and irreversible end after a certain number of plays. Two groups playing the same game will therefore have massively different experiences.
SeaFall will be unique as the first legacy game not to adapt an existing IP: it’s legacy from root to fruit. Each player (3 to 5 of them) is the leader of a small province, trying to gain glory for their land. They can do this by exploring, raiding islands (or other players), trading, or constructing buildings to improve their province.
At the start of the game, the board is as empty as a promise to definitely get back to you by the end of next week, but as players explore and discover, new islands will emerge, changing the landscape and presenting more and more options for players to take in pursuit of greater glory.
Daviau estimates the game will conclude after roughly 15 plays, at which point the most glorious player will unite the provinces and win the campaign.
The Publisher
Plaid Hat Games was founded in 2009 by Colby Daunch to publish his original design Summoner Wars. They pride themselves on publishing games that are thematic, challenging, and allow players to engage with one another.
One of their other top board game titles is Dead of Winter: A Cross Roads Game, which won two awards in 2014 - The Best Innovative Game and Best Thematic Game at the Golden Geek Awards.
The Designer
Rob Daviau is an American board game designer renowned for his innovative ‘legacy’ blueprint. He first applied it to the popular game Risk, then to the equally popular game Pandemic, and has now gone original with SeaFall.
He founded his own publisher, IronWall Games, in 2012, which is co-publishing SeaFall with Plaid Hat.
If you’re a fan of large bodies of water and rapid downward descents, SeaFall is still available for pre-order here at Zatu Games! Stock is running very low however so you will need to act fast if you are to get your copy of this huge board game!
