Oceans has been nominated for three BoardGameGeek.com awards
almost 3 years ago – Fri, Apr 30, 2021 at 03:59:05 PM

I found out yesterday that Oceans was nominated for 3 categories including Game of the Year (medium weight).  I also found out that voting ends tonight!

If you think Oceans is worthy of any of the following nominations, please vote.  It will bring attention to a game you helped bring to life.

• Artwork & Presentation
• Card Game
• Medium GOTY

If you haven't yet opened up your Oceans box, here is some of the beautiful art you'll find in the deep:

BoardGameGeek.com voting explained

You'll need 20 geekgold, or an avatar to vote.  If needed, send a geekmail to DomCrap and I'll give you 30 geekgold for an avatar. 

VOTE HERE

Voting is a bit complicated. Games get points based on how many other games are ranked below it. So if you vote for Oceans as #1, but don't put any other games below it, it's the same as not voting.

Reddit

It's frowned upon to promote your work on Reddit, so I'm not going to post there. If  But if you're active on Reddit and think Oceans is worthy of more attention, please post.  We would greatly appreciate it.

Cheers!

Dominic Crapuchettes

The "free-to-try" digital implementation of Oceans is now available for download!
over 3 years ago – Tue, Nov 24, 2020 at 06:05:13 PM

The "free-to-try" Oceans Lite app is available on iOS and Android.

As the name implies, the Oceans Lite app isn't the complete game yet, but it's a wonderful (and free) way to get your friends to learn the game so you can play together when this pandemic settles down.  It has an interactive learning tutorial, and is surprisingly good for only having a limited number of the Deep cards. There is no better way to introduce your friends to Oceans in preparation for the first expansion.

The Oceans Lite app comes with all the Surface cards, 20 Deep cards, 4 Scenario cards, an interactive tutorial, and a solo mode against the Beginner AI.  

Additional packs of Deep and Scenario cards will be released for $.99 each, as soon as they become available. The first card pack is available right now. Purchasing any additional cards will unlock the Pass & Play mode, the Easy AI, and Medium AI.  The Hard AI will be added as soon as the machine learning AI becomes good enough for us to call it a hard AI.

Please give it a try, and then share with a friend so we can grow the player base before we release Legends of the Deep.

• Twitter
• Facebook 
• YouTube (Oceans Lite trailer)

Thanks again for helping bring Oceans to life! We're excited to continue growing this game's world and we wouldn't be able to do so without your support.

~ Dominic Crapuchettes, lead designer of Oceans & Evolution

I have a confession to make...
over 3 years ago – Fri, Nov 20, 2020 at 08:36:49 PM

One of the design goals for Oceans was to look past what is known about nature to explore the world of speculative fiction and mythology. 

Oceans begins in the natural world with traits that have already been discovered by scientists, but quickly looks into what might be discovered in the future.  This is where the excitement in Oceans is generated - speculating about what has yet to be discovered! 

In a previous life, I was an academic obsessed with learning. Countless times I would come across things that were too wonderous to be believed, and yet they turned out to be true (like when I studied Einstein's 1905 papers on the relativity of time). I wanted to bring this same sense of wonder to the game play of Oceans.  To do that, I had to enter the world of speculative fiction. Once you already accept something as fact, it stops invoking that sense of wonder that I wanted to create.

I was being sneaky

Honestly, I was trying to be sneaky because I didn't want to upset our hard-core science fans. I wanted to ease people into the world of fantastic mythologies without overtly saying it. I didn't realize how subtle I had been. Just look at the back of the box! Nothing about that image screams science to me. I thought Oceans had already crossed the line into the world of mythology, but I was wrong. There is a big difference between speculative science and high fantasy.

I've spent a good part of the past several days trying to understand where people are coming from and I think I have a better grasp of why some of you had a visceral reaction to the announcement. 

It really sucks

Let me tell you something - it really sucks when you share something you're excited about and it gets trashed in the comments by some of your fans. I deeply regret that I did a poor job of explaining why this expansion is inspiring to me. On the flip side, I can see how it sucks to be expecting a science based expansion and get blindsided with high fantasy. I think there might be a happy medium. Further development of this expansion will put more emphasis on indigenous mythologies, and less emphasis on high fantasy. Hopefully that will feel less egregious to our science and nature fans.

For the Love of Science and Nature

I want everyone to know that I still have a genuine love of nature and science. Nothing has changed on that front. I also love mythologies - old and new ones. So while this expansion will focus on the mythologies that excite me, please know that we will release expansions in the future that stick to science and nature. There is ample room in the Oceans game system for both science and speculative fiction.

For the Love of Mythology

I want to open up the discussion again for recommendations on specific mythologies that I should look into. Please do not post if you are not interested in Legends of the Deep. It hi-jacks the conversation, marginalizes those of us who love mythology, and makes it harder for me to learn about the mythologies that inspire others. Please post links to images and articles about mythologies you'd like to see in Legends of the Deep. Thanks!

Here is a link to the Oceans Discord community if you'd like to get involved in playtesting.

• https://discord.gg/eeFygGp

Thanks for listening

~ Dominic Crapuchettes, finding inspiration in science, nature and fantastical mythologies

Oceans Discount Code

I didn't post this previously because our Kickstarter fans already have Oceans, but now I realize some people might be interested in getting Oceans as a holiday gift.  You can get 20% off Oceans and all Oceans accessories from the North Star Games website and Amazon for the rest of the month with this discount code:

• 20DeepDive

Another announcement coming soon

Sorry about flooding you with updates, but we expect to have more exciting news to share very soon. 

A recent discovery lurking deep below...
over 3 years ago – Fri, Nov 20, 2020 at 02:35:16 PM

As loyal backers of Oceans, we want you to be among the first to learn about an expansion we’re working on. Oceans is a journey into the unknown, where you discover powerful traits that hardly seem possible in the realm of biology, and yet they turn out to be real. But coming next summer, you will be able to discover things beyond the realm of science... 

Empires of Mythic Proportions!

Legends of the Deep is an expansion that will bring high fantasy into the Oceans ecosystem. Each player will have 4 over-sized Empire cards at the start of each game that can be played instead of a trait. Empire cards affect every one of your species. For instance, the Flying Whales empire might say "Each of your species gets "Forage 5. May store 5 extra population. Cannot be attacked by a species with a Deep trait." 

The Cthulhu card, designed to strike fear in the hearts of your opponents, might say "Opponent's species Age +6," while the Leviathan card might say "You may only have 1 species. It gets [attack 25], may have 2 additional traits, and does not have a population limit."

The expansion is still in its early testing phases. Join the Oceans Discord community if you'd like to get involved.

• https://discord.gg/eeFygGp

We hope to bring the expansion to Kickstarter in mid-2021. Sign up for the North Star Games newsletter if you'd like to stay informed.

What empires would you like to see?

If you have an idea for an empire you’d like to see included, please comment below.  Links to images and reference material would be much appreciated.

Thanks again for helping bring Oceans to life! We're excited to continue growing this game's world, and that wouldn't be possible without your support.

~ Dominic Crapuchettes, lead designer of Oceans & Evolution

Wrapping up the Oceans Kickstarter campaign
over 3 years ago – Fri, Aug 07, 2020 at 07:38:24 PM

I’d like to give a Gargantuan thanks to all of our backers for the Oceans Kickstarter rollout! We’ve had lots of enthusiastic responses from folks enjoying the game.   

That said, we undertook what in retrospect appears to be an overly ambitious project that expanded to 42 offerings in five languages shipping to 73 countries. This created serious logistical challenges for delivery that were magnified exponentially by the global Covid pandemic and restrictions. For those of you who faced delays in the delivery of your games, we apologize and thank you for your patience and support.

FINAL TWO WEEKS

We are now entering the final phase of the campaign. We will lose access to the original Kickstarter database on August 31, but more importantly, we need to put the campaign books to rest before we embark on our next (epic) project. Some of you have still not responded to your BackerKit surveys, which is required to ship your games. If you haven’t yet responded to your survey, please do so before August 21st or we will be unable to process your order.

If our volunteers at [email protected] have already been in contact with you, that’s great. We’re working on it. If not, you should reach out to them.

Please accept our DEEP gratitude for your support! 

~ Dominic Crapuchettes