Forgotten Waters

In Forgotten Waters, the players are pirates sailing the seven seas on the hunt for treasure, mystical or otherwise. As well as the game itself, you’ll need access to the internet to play, as how your adventures pan out are revealed using the website fwcrossroads.com.

Each player plays an individual pirate, and you can have a kittle creative fun with the name and backstory you create before play begins. Then one of five scenarios are chosen from the website, starting with the introductory scenario Beyond the Ocean’s Edge. Although there are various paths that can be travelled through the game’s system, how it all functions is pretty straightforward: your current location is represented by a two-page spread in a book, and upon arriving at the location everyone has forty seconds to choose an available action. Some – the red actions – must be chosen, by someone. Blue actions are one-person only and green are open to multiple players to visit. Broadly, the actions strike a balance between maintaining the condition of the crew, ship and supplies, and furthering either your own individual development as a pirate of notoriety or getting the collective closer to the goal of the scenario itself – either finding some critical artefact or – most often – moving the ship across the seas, loading and firing cannons, and interacting with other characters. Once all actions are resolved, the page directs you to a chapter on the website, where the next part of the story plays out.

We can’t tell you about the scenarios themselves, but as you travel and take actions you’ll be improving your scores for six individual pirate skills from hunting to brawn to aim, and the purpose of this is twofold. Firstly, throughout the game there are checks where dice are rolled and added to your score on a particular skill: the higher the better, so better skills equal a better chance of success. Secondly, each pirate is playing out a miniature narrative of their own: developing skills allows you to – sometimes – cross off a star on your individual constellation map. Doing so will push your own story on a little further, and when the collective objective is met – assuming you don’t all die in some heinous piratey fashion – players who’ve completed at least four of these ‘constellation events’ win. Complete five for a legendary win!

Although Forgotten Waters offers only five scenarios, because of how the game is constructed it is possible to replay scenarios: they may not have the freshness of the first play – you’ll know what’s at stake – but you may tread a very different path in how you reach the destination. Along with the variety in what you might encounter at sea, there are also the variables in how lucky you are with the dice, and a huge amount of treasure cards and story cards you may encounter along the way that also bring a lot of variety in how the game plays out. And the scenarios aren’t short – even with just three players they take several hours to complete. The game offers a ‘saving’ option for those times when you want a break from all the keel-hauling, throaty laughter and murderous intent.

There are a few other wrinkles we’ve not touched on, such as how the game could end badly: a ruptured hull, a mutinying crew, or the threat track topping out and sone kind of nemesis reaching you. There’s also a B-plot playing out about the Captain himself as well, but all of these things are pretty much run for you, and the game – and the story – unfolds with increasing ease the longer you play.