1. Title & Basic Info
Title: The Lost
Players: Four players
Length: 30-50 minutes
Age: 7+
2. Razor
The Lost is a pirate-themed 4-player cooperative survival adventure game where teamwork and resourcefulness are necessary for
unlocking hidden memories and escaping the cursed seas. If you can survive your crewmates that long...
3. Slogan
Lost at sea, bound by fate—will you discover the truth or be consumed by it
4. Vision Statement & Top-level summary of your game idea
In“ The Lost,” players awaken on a mysterious island with no memory of their past, armed only with a map marking the locations of keys and treasure. As they sail through treacherous waters, they must work together, balancing limited resources and precarious crewmate morale to overcome challenges that reveal pieces of their lost identities. With each discovery, the players unravel dark secrets of betrayal and greed, facing the choice to seek redemption or repeat past mistakes. This cooperative adventure tests courage, trust, and the strength of bonds, delivering an immersive experience of survival, mystery, and the power of forgiveness.
8. Why Your Project is Innovative?
(a) Innovation
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Unique Narrative & Morale System: Our game merges a suspenseful, evolving narrative with a morale-based mechanic thatdynamically impacts gameplay. Each player's choices and morale status influence their abilities, creating an unpredictable, immersiveexperience where teamwork is crucial.
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Role-Specific Challenges & Rewards: Players are assigned distinct roles (e.g., Navigator, Chef, Carpenter, Captain), each withspecific responsibilities and special abilities influenced by their morale. This role structure adds depth to collaboration, as players muststrategically rely on each other’s skills to progress.
(b) Relevance
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Relatable Real-Life Challenges: The game touches on universal themes of collaboration and self-awareness, which are highlyrelevant in modern team-based work environments and social settings. Players are prompted to balance personal goals with teamobjectives, reflecting challenges they face in their own lives.
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Meaningful Engagement: By finding treasure during the journey that forces players to make difficult decisions, the game offers ameaningful experience beyond simple game. It creates space for players to reflect on their motivations and relationships with others.
(b) Selling Points
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Immersive Story: The mysterious journey and unfolding backstory keep players engaged as they uncover clues to their characters'pasts.
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Impactful Cooperative Gameplay: This is more than a game about “winning.” Players must collaborate closely and manageresources wisely to reach their goal, making each decision critical that can help them finish the journey.
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Replayability & Player-Driven Outcomes: With multiple endings based on player choices, each playthrough offers a differentexperience, encouraging players to come back to explore alternative paths and consequences.
9. Introduction
Premise & Theme
In The Lost, players awaken on an island with no memory of who they are, only to find a map hinting at hidden treasuresand three keys with pieces of diaries scattered across seas. As they navigate this mysterious world, players uncoverfragments of their past, revealing dark truths and a hidden curse tied to the treasure.
Setting
The game is set in a magical sea filled with storms, pirate ambushes, and supernatural encounters. Islands are scatteredacross the map, each harbouring clues, supplies, and challenges for the crew during the journey to the final treasure andthe back truth.
Game Objective
Players must cooperate to survive and gather the three keys to unlock the final treasure chest, finding their lost memoriesand the game’s ultimate mystery. Success lies in maintaining ship safety, managing morale, and balancing resources toensure the crew’s survival.
Core Gameplay
Players take on roles like Captain, Navigator, Chef, and Carpenter, each with distinct tasks and abilities tied to morale.They manage resources, respond to different types of action cards, and make strategic decisions to navigate, repair, andexplore while uncovering hidden memories.
Unique Elements
The game uniquely combines a cooperative survival mechanic with a suspenseful narrative, where players’ memories areslowly revealed through collected keys. With a morale system that affects their abilities, players must balance self-interestwith teamwork, facing morally challenging decisions. The mysterious treasure itself introduces a twist, challengingplayers to confront their own motivations and redefine success through teamwork rather than only survival.
10. Narrative/Story
The Lost narrative unfolds as players progress through the game. The story begins with four characters strandedon a deserted island, without remembering who they are or how they arrived there. A mysterious map hints atthree scattered keys, each unlocking parts of their hidden past and leading them closer to a legendary treasure.
However, the journey reveals clues by fragments of a bloodstained diary and symbolic relics that graduallypaint a picture of betrayal, greed, and a dark curse tied to the treasure.As players uncover these memory fragments, they learn they were once crewmates on the same friendly boatwhere a fierce struggle for the treasure led them to turn on one another. The final revelation confronts playerswith a moral choice: to repeat the cycle of greed or to set aside their past conflicts for the greater good. Thisdecision ultimately determines the game’s ending, either locking them in a loop of endless strife or allowingthem to escape with new insights into unity and trust.
11. Game
Mechanics
Core Mechanics
Players & Target Audience
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Number of Players: 4
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Target Audience: Ages 9+, suitable for anyone interested in cooperative storytelling and strategy games, with a focus onteamwork and decision-making.
Roles & Abilities
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Each player takes on one of four roles: Captain, Navigator, Chef, or Carpenter. Each role has unique tasks and abilities.
Morale System
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Morale impacts each character’s abilities, with different effects on high, normal, and low morale. High morale enhancesabilities, while low morale restricts them.
Resource Management
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Players collect Food and Wood from islands to maintain morale and repair the ship. Energy and resources are consumedstrategically to manage tasks, survive events, and progress toward objectives.
ActionCards
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Introduce random challenges, such as storms, pirate ambushes, and supernatural encounters. Players must work together toresolve these events, which impact morale, ship condition, and available resources.
Treasure and Memory Fragments
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Players collect three keys to unlock the final treasure. Each key reveals a memory fragment, shedding light on the crew’s pastand hinting at the curse. The final treasure holds a crucial choice that influences the game’s ending.
Secondary Mechanics
1. Energy Sharing
Players can share energy with each other, emphasizing collaboration and teamwork.
2. Room-Based Damage System
Ship damage affects specific rooms, impacting the roles of characters occupying those spaces. The Carpenter mustmanage damage effectively to keep critical rooms functional.
Setup
1. Players place the ship board in the center, surrounded by island cards with resources and treasures.
2. Each player selects a role and receives their role-specific character card.
3. Event, action, and memory cards are shuffled and placed in designated areas.
4. Resources (Food, Wood, Energy) are distributed, and morale trackers are set to normal levels.
Gameplay Procedures
1. Movement & Exploration: The Captain spins the compass to set a direction, and the Navigator rolls to determine thenumber of steps. The ship moves accordingly, and players encounter islands or events along the way.
2. Resource Collection & Management: Players gather resources at islands and allocate them as needed for morale, repairs,and surviving event cards.
3. Overcome actions: Players draw and resolve action cards, choosing actions that balance resource costs, risk, and potentialmorale changes.
4. Endgame: Upon collecting all three keys, players reach the final treasure, revealing the last part of the diary and choosingbetween repeating their destructive past or embracing cooperation to break the curse.
12 Play matrix
Skill vs. Chance Matrix Explanation
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Energy Distribution and Fixing Shape/Maintaining Morale lean heavily towards the Skill side asthey require players to strategically manage resources and make calculated decisions to keep morale andship health in check.
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Overall, the Game sits closer to the Skill end but allows some Chance due to event cards and randomelements like dice rolls. This reflects the balance between player decisions and randomized events thatimpact the game.
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Move of Shape and Pick Action Card are closer to Chance since movement and events rely on dicerolls and card draws, adding an element of unpredictability. thinking andresource management.
Mental Calculation vs. Physical Dexterity Matrix Explanation
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Choosing the Game's End and Finding the Last Memory require Mental Calculation since playersmust interpret narrative elements and make strategic choices based on their objectives and the game'sstory progression.
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Fixing Shape/Maintaining Morale is largely Mental Calculation oriented, as it involves trackingresource use and adjusting strategies.
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Lost Shape Health/Morale and Pick Action Card introduce an element of Chance, especially sinceaction cards and event outcomes may depend on random factors, but require less Physical Dexteritythan other tasks.
Red Dot Placement and Summary
The red dots in each matrix represent the Overall Game:
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In the Skill vs. Chance matrix, the game leans slightly toward Skill, as managing resources and moralerequires thoughtful decisions. However, a degree of Chance is still involved due to dice rolls and actioncards.
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In the Mental Calculation vs. Physical Dexterity matrix, the game aligns closely with MentalCalculation rather than Physical Dexterity, as players primarily engage in strategic
13 Rule Sheet [submit as attached .pdf and link to online document]In the Shared file