Fishy? A Cooperative Board Game

“Fishy?” is a cooperative game against the board where players are required to strategically manage resources to ensure sustainable growth in the system. The game simulates the relationship between people, governments and corporations. Players play the role of “Fish Fathers” or representatives of the people, they are each assigned a “School of Fish” and their goal is to grow their school, sustainably. 

During the game, players can choose to make their school of fish work, or move around the free market, trading with any lily pad they choose to earn more food for their school. They are responsible for the health of their school of fish, and in return it affords them actions they can take during the game. In every turn, the players are using resources to sustain and grow the ecosystem – they make decisions about how the different entities (lily pads and their school of fish) in the ecosystem grow.

However, a lily pad that is “too big” can wreak havoc in the ecosystem. It can cause the market to evolve into a “King Market” where work is poorly compensated for and resources are drained intensively. The game cannot go on for long while in King market, the players need to pool their resources to come out of the King Market. 

Players lose if they run out of resources while in King Market, they also lose if their fish cemeteries are full (fish are moved to the cemetery when players can’t feed their fish in a turn). Players can win the game when all players have full schools of fish. 

Strategy and chance play pivotal roles in the game play. In early games, players may find it intuitive to focus on growing one lily pad – the exponential increase in returns can be a lucrative incentive for players. However, this is unsustainable and is checked either by players drawing a “Market Check” card or the maximum growth in the market rate card.