Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
How it plays
How does it play?
Ocean Crisis depicts a real life environmental disaster in which a million tons of massive plastic waste is poured into the ocean each year, causing ocean life to cease faster than ever before.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Cooperative Game
Players coordinate their actions toward a shared objective and win or lose together.
Worker Placement
Commit limited workers to action spaces before opponents occupy them.
Dice Rolling
Roll dice to introduce uncertainty into actions, production, movement, or resolution.
Tile Placement
Place tiles to build a shared or personal spatial arrangement.
Read the full game description
Ocean Crisis depicts a real life environmental disaster in which a million tons of massive plastic waste is poured into the ocean each year, causing ocean life to cease faster than ever before. Players are the defenders of the ocean and will do whatever it takes to stop the formation of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a.k.a., the Ocean Waste Island. On each turn, ocean waste occurs on rivers, along seashores, and within the ocean. All players co-operate and place their workers by choosing from two actions: waste clean-up or environmental activity. Roll a die to determine whether a piece of garbage is cleaned up, or place road tiles to launch an environmental activity. At the end of each turn, all garbage flows downstream along the river, and the ocean current board will spin randomly, bringing a piece of garbage from the ocean to seashores, or from seashores to the Garbage Patch! Environmental activities are mostly preventative measures, including adding a skill such as recycling or reusable products to a player, researching a certain type of garbage for waste reduction, or designing an ocean clean-up machine that can be sent out to clean ocean waste by itself. If players survive a six-turn bombardment of ocean waste without having the Great Pacific Garbage Patch form completely, the ocean crisis seems to be solved (for now), and players win the game together! Ocean Crisis also comes with six environmental side missions and scenarios for players to challenge, including dolphin rescue, sea turtle nesting, and shark defender, completing the full picture of ocean protection from an ecological point of view.