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Lifeboats box art
1993 Ranked #2,068

Lifeboats

Cutthroat survival game where passengers on sinking ships fight for room in lifeboats and a chance to reach shore. Alliances are temporary, so every rescue, shove, and vote can decide who is sacrificed to the sea.

Family Games Nautical Negotiation Player Elimination Simultaneous Action Selection

Players

3-6

Play time

Not listed

Age

12+

Complexity

1.78/5

Rating

6.58

Harder to teach Highly interactive Deep strategy

Overview

At a glance

Is this game right for my group?

ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.

Teachability 2.3/5

Harder to teach

Replay value 4.0/5

High replayability

Interaction 3.6/5

Highly interactive

Player scaling 4.0/5

Scales well

Strategic depth 4.5/5

Deep strategy

See all 5 specifications

How it plays

How does it play?

Also known as 'Rette Sich Wer Kann' ('Each Man for Himself') and often times referred to as 'The Lifeboat Game,' this pure negotiation game puts a different spin on the typical ocean catastrophe.

Core mechanisms

Key systems that shape the decisions players make.

Read the full game description

Also known as 'Rette Sich Wer Kann' ('Each Man for Himself') and often times referred to as 'The Lifeboat Game,' this pure negotiation game puts a different spin on the typical ocean catastrophe. There's been a boating accident, and a rag-tag group of six lifeboats is trying to make its way to one of several islands just over the horizon. However only one boat will make any forward progress in a given turn, so players try to convince everyone to vote for his particular favorite. To further complicate matters, the sailors can't seem to decide which boat they want to be in, so they're constantly jumping out of boats to swim to another one. As if all that wasn't enough, one of the boats springs a leak each turn. If the boat is at maximum occupancy when the leak occurs, then players vote to decide who to toss to the sharks!

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Editions

Language and publisher variants currently recorded in the catalog.

Edition Year Language Publisher / Region
No editions imported yet.

Player resources

Rulebooks, player aids, FAQs, and solo resources.

No files imported yet.

Game and edition data

All specifications (5)

Play and group

Players
3–6
Best with
5–6
Play time
90 min
Age
12+
Complexity
1.8/5
Credits and catalog connections

Credits

Designers

1
Ronald Wettering

Artists

2
Matthias Catrein Wolfgang Steinmeyer

Publishers

3
Argentum Verlag Walter Müller's Spielewerkstatt Z-Man Games

Linked items

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