Hellapagos

Plays: 5Px1.

The Game

Hellapagos is a low-complexity survival game. It's not really a cooperative game, and doesn't feel like a semi-cooperative one either. Yet it is not a pure competitive game. You are survivors of a ship running aground, and are now stranded on a deserted island. A typhoon is coming, and you need to leave the island before it hits. If you don't manage to do so, you die on the island and lose the game. Those who manage to escape the island in time win.

The first thing to talk about is the weather deck. You draw one card at the start of every round. One of the bottom six cards is the typhoon card. When you draw it, the current round is your last round. Other weather cards tell you the rainfall of the day (i.e. the round). If it rains, you can collect rainwater. The heavier the rain, the more you can collect.

Every round everybody gets to perform one action. You have four options. You may fish (to gain food). You may collect rainwater (to gain drinking water). At the end of every round, every survivor needs to eat one food and drink one water. If there is a shortage, someone (or someones) needs to die (and lose). You vote to decide who dies. The third option is to collect wood, which is needed to build rafts, which is in turn needed for leaving the island. The fourth option is to scavenge the shipwreck to look for useful items. This is represented by drawing item cards from a deck.

You use these wooden balls when you fish and when you collect wood. They are put into a bag, and you blind draw from the bag. If you perform the fishing action, you draw one ball, and see how many fishes are on it. The number ranges from 1 to 3. This is how many fishes you manage to catch that day. If you collect wood, you decide up front how many balls you want to draw from the bag. If none of them are black, you gain a number of wood equaling the number of balls drawn. If you draw the black ball, you are bitten by a snake, you gain no wood, and you lose your action next round.

The game board serves only two important purposes. You track the quantity of food and water, and you track your progress in raft-building. There is a procedure diagram for raft-building at the centre. A marker will be placed here to indicate your progress. For every 6 wood collected, you complete one raft. One raft only supports one survivor. If you want more people saved, you need more rafts. The #6 position is for placing the completed rafts.

This is the item deck from which you draw cards. The deck holder (which is not really necessary) is in the shape of a shipwreck, because you are scavenging stuff from the shipwreck. The deck is supposed to fit sideways into the holder, but now that the cards are sleeved, they don't fit anymore. So the deck is now jammed in in this ugly manner. It's probably better to just not use the deck holder.

The card above is the weather card of the day. The 2 inside the water drop means if you collect rainwater, you gain 2 units of water. The cards below are the completed rafts. Two of them are completed, which means at most two people can be saved. To leave the island, each person also needs one food and one water, in addition to the one raft. If there is not enough food or water, it's voting time again, to see who gets left behind and who sails away with the supplies.

The track for food (fish) and water (water drop).

This is one of the item cards, and it is one with no function (other than making you laugh). Drawing cards is not risk-free. You may draw such rubbish and waste your turn.

The Play

We did a 5-player game - Tim, Ivan, Allen, Jeff and I. Most of us were new to the game. Right from the beginning we were on survival mode. The initial food and water did not last long. We realised the game was designed to get people killed. The struggle was bad enough to collect enough food and water. There was little time left to build rafts and plan for escape. We were already having a hard time surviving day-to-day. Not enough actions, not enough time. It was impossible to have everyone live. Someone would not be going home. We came to this realisation gradually, as we watched our supplies dwindle, our raft-making stall, and the weather deck deplete. It was a little scary. The whole experience was about impending doom.

We were cooperative for the most part. We discussed openly and worked together to solve our problems. There was one round when we were short on food, and someone might have to die. One of us had a resurrection card, and we discussed and agreed on who was going to die temporarily, to save some food and water, only to be resurrected the next round. Ivan often drew cards, and he willingly spent his cards for the common good. Drawing cards is usually a good thing. It can be a form of self protection. Others don't know what you have. You can persuade them that you have good stuff that helps the team, and ask them not to vote you out. Or you can threaten to shoot and kill if they try anything funny. With more cards, you have more control and more bargaining power. In contrast, when you collect wood, water or food, they go to a common pool and are not yours to decide how to use. Drawing cards is a somewhat selfish (or less selfless) action, so do watch out for people who only like to draw cards.

The typhoon came sooner than we expected. It did not feel like we had much time to prepare. We only had two rafts built, so at least three people had to die on the island. At this moment, the guy whom we decided would temporarily die was not yet resurrected. The other guy with the resurrection potion decided, sorry mate, since it's time for someone to die, you might as well die more ahem permanently. Don't come back to eat more of the remaining food and water. Now you know who your real friends are not! Allen waved the winning lottery ticket in his hand desperately (yes, there really is such an item card in the game, and it has no function) offering to share it with whoever helped him return to civilisation. No one listened.

It was time for the final reckoning. The was much voting to be done, first to see who would die of hunger and thirst, and then to see who would be forced to stay on the island due to insufficient supplies for the rafts. We realised that by the time we had to load supplies onto the rafts, we wouldn't have enough for even one person (1 food + 1 water). So we were all doomed. The end. Thank you for coming.

After the game, we concluded that the best way to play was to find an opportune moment to boost the food and water levels to a peak, and then at that instant kill off a bunch of competitors. By culling the population, the food and water would last longer, and hopefully there would be enough left to supply the rafts. In our game we were mostly playing good guys, and the need to feed five mouths every round was a heavy burden.

The Thoughts

Hellapagos is a simple casual game which will work well with non-gamers. The premise is easy to grasp and draws you in. There's a lot of Lord of the Flies in here, so the competition and player interaction quickly becomes very real and intense. This game will work well in a party setting, because of how easy it is to teach. There is voting, and thus most likely also politicking, favouritism and betrayal, so best not to take the game too seriously, lest hurt feelings. There's negotiation, bluffing and threatening, because of the cards you hold in secret. Yet the game is short and you can play a few times in succession.