Feedback Please - Treasure Diver

If you want to target a younger audience, you'll definitely need to lure them in with "cartoon-like" artwork. A "Medieval Fantasy" with dungeon doors (ala Munchkin) is another theme for the genre (but I think your theme is more original)...

You haven't included rules for the "Sharks". I figure if you just ADD them to the game "As-Is", it'll be very "vanilla-ish". So you score a Shark-bite, all you do is score less points and take a bite.

Now hear me out (if you don't like it so be it). Something along the lines, that each diver has a "bleed" count and each player controls the "Sharks" played. It's just an idea... but basically instead of battling with another DIVER, you place a SHARK in its PLACE (to defend the treasure).

And then you would need to have a "defense-deck" of cards you can use to ward off the SHARK (like Instants in Magic)...

Would definitely SPICE UP things quite a bit... Again "rough" ideas... Not sure how to implement. You would need to do some more thinking!

Cheers...

Up the "Ante"... Sort of like in WAR! Basically once you place your Divers, you then have the chance of USING a "Treasure" you already WON and play a "defense" card like "Steel Cage (3)" or "Harpoon (2)" or "Wrench (1)" where the POWER of the "defense" card is used to WARD-OFF a Shark played by the opponent...

You might USE and LOSE a "Treasure" if the opponent's card was NOT a "Shark". In the case you win, you recover everything... (Not sure if this works or not... Needs playtesting)...

Anyway just another idea!

I like the overall feel of the game. Really cool for kids I believe.
This game will definitely work with younger kids. Around 4-5 they can solve false-belief-tasks and at 6 they are certainly capable of bluffing. You may need to guide them a little, but eventually it will work.

If you go for a kids theme I would also suggest dragons and treasure chests. Maybe even a little quirkier like
T-Rexes and cheeseburgers or something.

I also feel that the sharks should have more of an effect and not only be tie breakers and zeros. You maybe could lose one random divers card for the next round. Opponent draws and you just put it face down on the table.

Would it be possible to put more than one divers card next to a stack of treasures? Is it a problem if on stack is gone earlier than the others? I feel this could enable players to "overload" on stacks and the bluffing would get crazier. Of course you then would have to tweak the numbers on the treasure cards a bit and maybe even add more divers.

Just a few ideas. Be patient with me, I'm only a rookie.

First off, I love this concept and will likely try it with my kids. I do want to point out that the end game scoring seems a bit tedious. Tallying up 24 cards to a median point value around 57-60 treasure points, in my limited experience, is kind of high for younger gamers.
Have you tried reducing the card count to fit the 36 card deck?

I really like the simplicity of this.

If there was one area I'd explore it would be what happens when players play a card with the same number of divers at the same location. In real life, I don't think they would just leave the treasure in the ocean simply because both players went down with the same number of divers.

Just throwing an idea out.

Perhaps the treasure cards are marked as to who gets them in case of a tie. (So if there were 36 treasure cards, 18 would be marked as favoring player 1, and the other 18 would favor player 2.)

If there is a tie, the player who that card favors, receives the card.

So then the question to ask when considering a card that favors your color, "do I put 2 divers on a card, so that I can use my 3 diver card on a different pile, or do I play my 3 diver card to ensure I get it?"

You could let the player that played the card with the lowest number divers pick first. The catch is they are only able to retrieve the numbers of treasure cards as divers on the card. This may work better with 4 or 5 cards in the pool.

Since you have three rounds. You make it so that any card that encountered a shark could not be used until the next round. You could even have bonus points for having the most uninjured divers at the end of each round. You could also introduce a zero diver card. I am not sure how difficult this would be for younger players to grasp but it could just be ignored.

You could add some set collection/treasures with powers for older players to make it a little more interesting. This could be ignored by younger players.

You could also have certain treasure trigger events. Like the round ends after this collection, add more cards, ect. The cards in guillotine may be a place to look for ideas. Again these could be ignored by younger players.

You could give each player a chum card that they could play once a game. Basically it would prevent you from picking up a shark card that round.

You could just generalize the theme to treasure hunting while avoiding monsters. This would leave design and art possibilities wide open.

As always feel free to use disregard or improve upon.

That's a bit HARD to implement. Perhaps an ALTERNATIVE is to have TWO (2) "Treasure" cards ... Sharing would mean one player get one card and the other player gets the second card...

Everything would work as before... But now you would have 4 piles of 10 cards each for a total of 40 cards. Which means about 5 rounds per game.

When a player plays CHUM, it means that he wants BOTH treasures. And the only way to stop this is by using a "counter-measure". In the event that a player figures out that the opponent was using CHUM and used a counter-measure, he would earn BOTH treasures (provided the counter-measure was sufficient enough)...

So this means ONLY 5 rounds. Quick for kids and not too many rounds making it probably easier to play with kids too!

I definitely think this game should be focused for a younger audience.

Here are my impressions and feedback:

- I am not so sure about the rule, "At the end of the round, players must choose one of their used cards to "sit out" the following round. At the end of the next round, it's returned to their hand." Won't a player always choose the Diver Card with a 1 on it and use all his highest cards or special cards. By using the 1 Card, the player will always get back the higher cards and specials? Is this an optimal strategy here?

- It seems to me that the player that peaks has a significant advantage versus the other player.

- It just seems weird to me to bid on a face down card I have no idea what is there.

- Shame harpoon gun is a one shot weapon. After it is used it reduces the amount of choices you have.

If I can think of one thing to make this game more interesting it would be to eliminate the peaking thing, and expand the amount of player cards and different types of sea creatures.

Some ideas:

- Have one of the player's cards be a trap card that has a value of zero but goes ahead causes the treasure (and the card the player played to be discarded).

- Have a deep dive card, so if the card drawn is a shark (and only a shark) the player gets to take the next card from the lagoon.

- Add different sea creatures like a dolphin which if you outbid the player you can add it to your hand and if you get a shark instead of adding to your hand you can discard it with the dolphin.

I would use the sea theme to inspire your game.

--DarkDream