Designed by: Roberto Fraga
Inspired by the fishing crews of the Maldives – and possibly the folding qualities of tablecloths – Maldivia is a feisty game of fishing, fish delivery, and fish theft. It’s USP is that the ‘board’ is actually a fabric, and as the game plays out, it gets smaller and smaller!
But it starts with the cloth -representing the sea – entirely visible. As you can see from the pictures, the sea is broken into squares and players will sail their boats along the columns and rows of the board, gathering fish if they stop on a fish space, stealing from opponents if you stop adjacent to them, and/or delivering if you stop at any edge of the board and have the fish currently in demand there – each board side will always have two ‘orders’ waiting to be fulfilled by the player who arrives with the matching fish.
How all this movement happens is like a miniature computer program: each player has four blocks, and three of them represent movement (we’ll come to the fourth block shortly). At the start of each round everyone sets their blocks in the orientation and order they want their boat to move, and then the blocks are revealed and activated one by one, going clockwise around the table. When your boat moves in any one direction, you can move it as far as you want as long as there no other boats in your way. After everyone has activated all blocks, the starting player changes and a new round begins. (Note that stopping your boat on an octopus space allows you to ‘reprogram’ a block you’ve not activated yet – either your own, or another player’s!)
That fourth block can go anywhere in your ‘program’ and represents which wind will blow: north, south, east or west. The blowing wind – and the fog it supposedly brings – is mechanically just the folding of the cloth from a particular direction: the play area gets smaller, and any boats caught up in this moment will lose a fish (it occasionally forces some boat movement too). As the board shrinks, sharks appear! If you stop on a shark space, you can swap a fulfilled order of your own for another player’s – chosen randomly. This allows you to – if you’re lucky – trade in a measly single fish order for another players 2, 3 or even 4 fish order. Each fish on the orders are worth a point, and most points wins the game!
There are a couple of other quirks too, like what happens if your boat can’t move (nothing!) and how orders change when the fog moves in, but that’s essentially it. Players keep playing until the board shrinks to just 16 navigable spaces, and then after the current turn everyone adds up their points.
Enough to be noticeable: as the fog and other players deprive you of your fish, you may also find your completed orders taken away and replaced by less rewarding ones.
It's pretty fast moving.
Each round each ship moves a maximum of three times, and the fog shrinks the board between 1-4 times (if more than one player selects the same direction, the fog only activates once for that direction). The unexpected aspects of the game are where and when the players bump into each other, and how much freedom a particular direction might give you.
It's a little chaotic, but actually pretty simple on the rules and the chaos is the fun and feisty type. But if the players are okay with the somewhat spicy interaction, this can be played (and perhaps house-ruled for a less combative experience?) by the very young.
2-4
Players
6+
Years
30-60
Mins
Sam says
Somewhere on the spectrum between control and chaos sits Maldivia. I'd say it feels more chaotic than not, as the variables of the shrinking board and what the players get up to keep changing the situation for everyone. But there is certainly some control too - and enough, I think - aligned with the breezy pace - to make Maldivia feel worthwhile pursuing. It's not that combative and it's not that funny. But it has a little of both, and plenty of twists along the way. Good stuff.