Lead your tribe to explore a new island every game! Build up your civilization with the value of the Carrot, and the help of special Action Cards. Can you conquer your opponents in 20 rounds?
Easy to learn and difficult to master, a standard game can be played in roughly 45-90 minutes; the short version times in at about 30-45 minutes.
Who will come out on top? Conquer your opponents and feast with your tribe!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
New Art & Earthquake Discussion!
almost 7 years ago
– Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 10:14:57 PM
Sorry about the delayed update yet again, everyone! I wish I could pay someone to follow me around and write down all my thoughts so these would be easier to finish hashing out, but ultimately we're stuck with what I can manage to do in the time available. I hope everyone's New Year is starting off well!
I've actually got quite a few things I'm excited to bring to your attention. I'm going to break this update into two different parts so it's a bit easier to understand (and you won't have to scroll forever).
First of all, our artist is back up and running at full speed! We're working on catching up with a ton of roughs/color proofs (so all she has to do after they've been approved is polish them to completion), but I'm gonna share one of my favorite new ones:
Are you Severely Lost, or just hiding from Cobalt?
. Severely Lost is an Action Card that allows you to move the Active Player (so, yourself or someone else on their turn) to an adjacent Map Tile - this means you don't need to follow the pathway arrows, you can hop forward or backward, up or down, left or right! There's only one of these in the Action Card deck, so if you get it in your hand, be sure to use it to either position yourself well, or move your opponent out of bounds.
Next, Earthquake is getting a makeover!
Earthquake's rules text basically reads as such: Put an Earthquake counter at the top of the countdown (which is a series of numbers printed on the card, ending in an "Earthquake!" spot). After you play a Movement Card, move the counter down once. When the counter hits "Earthquake!" immediately remove the top Building Token from the Territory Tile your Rabbit has landed on. There are three Earthquake Action Cards in the deck and they're the only way to remove a Building Token from a Territory Tile.
At MAGFest, we demoed Rabbit Island - like we've been doing for years now - and a couple of players had excellent feedback at the end of their game.
I always tell game designers & producers to never stop playtesting because you never know what game-changing advice will come up. Essentially this means take all the constructive criticism that you receive and consider it carefully as you continue on the path to publication.
So when the players brought up how shocked they were by how powerful the Earthquake was during the end of the game, I definitely listened. This player's opponent had played one of the three Earthquake Action Cards close to the end of their game, and the resulting loss of points was significant during their final tally. It never feels good to lose a game, but these players wanted to propose a solution to what they saw as an imbalance in the game's math.
Samantha, our game designer, and I, have had our reservations about how "swingy" the Earthquake has felt during games - sometimes only negating a single Victory Point, while other times it might hit for six Victory Points! Depending on when the Earthquake goes off - any time it's drawn other than the last 2 turns of the game - you may not have time to recoup those lost points.
These players had noticed this "swingy" nature also, and gave us a very elegant solution - instead of removing the top Building Token, remove the bottom.
Additionally, we will be adding, "This action can't be cancelled" to the rules text for the card. It will still be able to be Advanced (or Severely Lost, etc.), but it cannot be countered by a Thwart! or Peace & Quiet Action Card.
Here's a reminder of the Victory Point spread per Territory Tile:
I didn't use the right fonts for the numbers here, whoops.
. Eliminating the bottom Building Token would contain the Victory Point damage to a much smaller, 1-2 point margin. However, it would still do larger VP damage on a Territory owned exclusively be one person - this means that Earthquakes would now encourage diversity in your real estate portfolio (haha, a little bunny realtor lingo!), which is a great side effect, in our opinion.
We continued to demo the game after having this conversation, and threw in this rules change, playtesting it as we went. Ultimately the math checks out, and - almost more importantly - it's more fun to play this way.
But is it an "Earthquake"?
Changing the rules almost always changes the flavor. Originally we pictured a situation in which a Town is toppled back into a Village state, or a Village into a Camp, and a Camp into bare land - an Earthquake might have been a little dramatic, but it was a decent flavor for such a momentous action.
Now, though, we're only removing Camps, and that's not quite the same thing. Additionally, "Earthquake" was pretty dramatic in that this is really more of a Rabbit-centric movement, rather than an impersonal world event. It follows a single player around and can be moved when that player moves, etc.
So I've been brainstorming different card titles, trying to come up with the right one for the world and the action at hand. I haven't actually been able to decide on one yet, so that'll have to part of the next update, sorry about that!
~*~*~
Thanks for your patience, everyone, as I manage to carve out these updates. I never knew two updates a month would feel like so much work! But it's been awesome being able to keep you all updated on how things are going, and I can't wait to finish the next one so we can continue making good progress as we forge toward completion!
Earthquake Post Part 1.5 - Or, here's an example of the change with pictures!
almost 7 years ago
– Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 10:06:50 PM
If you haven't read about the changes to the Earthquake Action Card, please check it out in my last post. It was rightfully brought to my attention in one of the comments that I could have done more to illustrate the rules change I discussed. (Thanks, Chris Chance!)
Y'all, I don't know why I didn't include more pictures of how to act out the change. I was so focused on getting the darn thing written that I guess I just gave up on managing anything more fancy.
Which, this gif is not super fancy, but it should get the job done!
Note: Not the final meeple, art, card title or really anything yet!
. (Note: I believe you will actually have to open this update into a web browser, as the GIF may not play in your email window. Sorry for any inconvenience!)
Basically, the old Earthquake design took out the top Building Token (whether it be a Camp, Village, or Town) and left the rest of the stack the same (or eliminated the stack outright).
The new Earthquake design will take out the bottom Building Token (which will always be a Camp, regardless of how many Building Tokens are stacked on top; if only a Camp exists on the Territory Tile, then the tile will be wiped clean).
In a stack of Town-Village-Camp, this means the Town is downgraded to a Village, the Village to a Camp, and the Town slot is left open for the conquering rabbit to steal.
Also on that post is some titling discussion, as I haven't given the new Earthquake a new title... If you have a suggestion, feel free to leave it on this post or that one!
Thank you!
Convention Alert: MAGFest 2018 / National Harbor, MD
almost 7 years ago
– Tue, Jan 02, 2018 at 10:56:23 PM
I promise to have a more comprehensive update next week, but I've had my hands too full of prep for MAGFest 2018 to be able to concentrate on much else.
But I wanted to say Happy New Year!! and touch base about what my schedule is going to look like at the convention, in case any of you fancy backers find yourself there and want to hang out with me!
FRIDAY
10 a.m. - Tabletop Room Opens, and I show up!
10 a.m. - 12 p.m. - Rabbit Island & Corruption Demos in the Indie Tabletop Room
>8 p.m. - play other people's games, check out some of the con space, etc., then hit the hay!
SUNDAY
10 a.m. - Tabletop Room Opens, but I'm actually probably going to head back home pretty early so I can get back with the family :)
What is Corruption you may be asking yourself about now - here's the Board Game Geek listing and the Corruption Facebook Page for those of you who haven't seen them yet. I'm working on adding a nicer looking page to the website at the moment, so while there's a link, it's still "lorem ipsom"-ed right now.
To be honest, it's nice to be demoing a fresh new game alongside trusty Rabbit Island, even if they're very different games. I'm looking forward to continuing to develop it in the near future!
Okay, thanks for your patience in waiting for a real Rabbit Island update; I'll be back next week with more information! Take care, y'all!
Mid-December And All's Well
almost 7 years ago
– Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 05:33:34 PM
Hey everyone!
So, I have a confession to make, I'm just going to get it over with right here at the top: Our artist moved.
Not just moved houses, or states, or over to a slightly new time zone - she moved from the US to the UK in the last couple weeks! She's with her family now, and getting settled in, and I'm super happy for her. She'll be starting back up today (Monday, the 18th), and I'm assured that she'll be jumping right back into the middle of things despite the looming holiday season.
While we have been planning on the move for a while, we weren't sure where she'd necessarily be in the production schedule (hence why you're only just hearing about it now), so all I've got waiting in the wings right now are a bunch of sketches and messy color roughs. Which, while kinda interesting to look at, aren't really how I want to promote the game, so instead, I thought I'd give you some other things to consider:
The Creative Content is slowly but surely coming along. Willow's Grand Adventure will hopefully be available for reading by my early-January update, as well as a couple of delicious-looking recipes. (I have touched base again with all Creative Content people recently, so message me if you haven't seen an email yet!)
The Spanish, Danish, French, and German translations of the rulebook are all in their final stages - we're down to making sure some nitpicky word choices come out right. These copies won't be DONE-done until they're in the final graphic rulebook layout, but I will post them for review on our BoardGameGeek page once we're satisfied they're finished.
Our meeple designer wants to finalize the meeple & sticker designs in the coming week, so I should have that graphic ready for early-January.
Finally, I'm busy scheduling our MAGFest trip for the first weekend of January. I'll have both Rabbit Island and Corruption: Sanctus Malum there for demoing! I'll post a more comprehensive update on that trip closer to the con.
I hope you've all had a great December so far! I'm looking forward to having a more graphic-heavy update available for you by January 1st (or just about that date) ;)
What's best after a Drought and Poor Harvest? A warm Thanksgiving!
almost 7 years ago
– Mon, Dec 04, 2017 at 10:37:06 PM
I've touched on the creative process that goes into making the art decisions for the cards in the last couple posts - and I'm a huge fan of being to show off more about how we create little storylines that tie multiple card arts together!
Without further ado...
For those of you who don't remember the wording for these particular Action Cards:
Drought - The active player harvests 0 Carrots. (Other Action Cards cannot increase this.)
Every Bunny Wins - Every player harvests 100 carrots.
(Further Note: The "active player" is the person whose turn it is; the "Territory Owner" is the person who owns the territory that is being affected by the harvest. The active player is sometimes also the Territory Owner, but the Territory Owner is not always the active player!)
I'm looking forward to getting back to you all around the middle of the month with even more art and stories to come! :D
