Rulebook
In-depth instructions for gameplay
Overview
Strategically stack tiles to conquer islands and their biomes in this board expanding, resource control game for 2-5 players. Tactically unleash volcanoes to disrupt your opponents and unlock powers, causing molten lava to cascade downhill, destroying everything in its path. When the lava reaches the ocean, rich volcanic soils emerge, inviting new opportunities for expansion across these ever-shifting lands.
Quickstart
Get up and playing in 5 mins
Ready…
This guide gets you up and running in a two player game - instructing you how to make your first few turns, they aren’t necessarily the best moves to take, but cover a wide range of options. It ignores a few things like the volcanic powers and sacrifices which you can skip for the first playthrough, or add them later for a more indepth experience.
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DIY
How to make your own set to play at home
I’d love for you to give this game a go. Here’s how I made it in Australia and how much it’d set you back to create your own:
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Print upgrades
Printing off the helper, summary and power cards
It’s kind of funny when something that was requested so early in the creation of the game takes me so long to finalise. It was identified very early on that a turn summary and a cost reminder card would be beneficial as the complexity of the game was stepping up. I designed basic cards and then some styled ones digitally not long after, but some 1.5yrs into development, I printed off these copies.
Up until this moment I had been rolling with a piece of paper with the turn order written down, which hey, did the job!
If it ain’t broke etc etc.
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Text styles and crucial files for .md to .docx to Affinity workflow
Summary Checklist for the dynamic rulebook
Source of truth: The markdown file
Images: Control sizes via the image Shortcode
Styles:
Print - Affinity's Text Styles Panel
Web - assets > css > print.css (also regular article.css)
Rulebook AF
Interesting developments
A big announcement was made by Affinity (now owned by Canva), which prompted me to open it up again for the first time in a few years.
I’ve always like the software, but whilst having access to Adobe through work, I’d been happily chipping away in there. The announcement making it FREE was an offer too good to pass up. I redownloaded and thought I would get right into it with a task I’d been putting off - properly designing the rulebook for print.
Power cards
Print readyifying
Jewellers Felt
A big prototype upgrade
Well, this has been a long time coming. It required one really hungover day post a masquerade ball where the body and mind decided that crafting, cups of tea, and chill beats were about the extent of excitement we could handle.
Earlier this week, I had done a bunch of searching and found the ‘breakthrough’ crafting material - Jeweller’s felt. Paired with a bit of ‘contact cement’ $2 glue from the Magic Dollar store, we were in business.
Before that I had been looking at adhesive foam and it was always too thick. I need the backing to barely add any measurable thickness to the tile heights as I didn’t need any more potential confusion on which colour was to connecting to what.
Faster! Faster!
How fast is too fast?
Deciding to change a core starting mechanic of the game can completely change the playstyle and feel.
There are two components that I’m currently tackling are starting islands and opener turns.
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