Game Preview: Captain Clueless
By W. Eric Martin
June 2, 2008
Publisher: Gamewright
Designer: Ted Cheatham
Players: 4-8
Ages: 8+
Playing Time: 20 minutes
Release Date: June 2008
Price: $20
Older games are often reborn in one form or another, whether as a straight reprint, a tweaked version from the original designer, or an “inspired by” version from some other person and publisher. The latter is the case for Gamewright’s Captain Clueless, which was born from a 2002 design called VOC! – Founding the Dutch East Indies Company.
Mass market publisher Gamewright is a far cry from tiny niche Dutch publisher Splotter Spellen, but designer Ted Cheatham plays the field, drawing influences from everywhere – including his own household. ”VOC combined a trading and goods management game with blindfolded drawing on the board for sailing ships,” he says. “The trading aspect was pretty good, but the randomness of the blindfolded sailing did not appeal to the people with whom I had played.” Cheatham’s son, on the other hand, enjoyed the sightless sailing but not the rest of the game, thereby inspiring Cheatham the Elder to create a fast-playing family game that focuses solely on the sailing.
Players in Captain Clueless divide into two teams that each need to navigate to several randomly drawn Caribbean ports in order to win. With the Captain being clueless – and said cluelessness being reinforced by a blindfold – the other team members take turns being his eyes, shouting out directions to try to keep the boat on course and off land as it sails the Caribbean Sea.
Players can give only a limited number of clues; with larger teams, each teammate has fewer lines to say, which creates a challenge since they can’t coordinate navigation clues beforehand. “Although some players can visualize the map better than others, the idea of drawing a route while understanding the scale of each movement can create problems for everyone,” says Cheatham. “The better and more concise that fellow team members can be while giving directions can make or break the mission.”
In addition to running onto land or out of clues, Captains also risk running out of time as a sand timer monitors their progress. While VOC had a playing time of 90-120 minutes, Captain Clueless docks at around 20 minutes. Says Cheatham, “The young at heart can definitely get a thrill from the actions involved with drawing on a board while wearing a blindfold with people yelling at you as a timer ticks away. Sounds like a lot of fun, doesn’t it?”
Posted by W. Eric Martin on Jun 2, 2008 at 02:00 AM in Game Previews / 2064
Comments:
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Actually, our group agreed with Ted’s son; we enjoyed the blindfolded sailing more than the other parts of the game. The problem was, this party game mechanic didn’t fit in at all with the rest of this rather serious game. I think Ted’s taken the best part out of VOC and I’ll be interested to see what he’s done with it. Posted by Larry Levy on Jun 2, 2008 at 02:55 PM | #
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Seconded. The blind sailing in VOC was a fun mechanism made frustrating by making it the limiting step in a traditional-and-light-only-compared-to-Splotter’s-other releases game. It needed to live again in a purer (if sillier) game. Good job Ted (and Doug). Posted by Jay Bloodworth on Jun 2, 2008 at 04:31 PM | #
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Looking forward to it! Posted by William Bussick on Jun 3, 2008 at 10:17 PM | #
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