Aquatika

Aquatika was awarded a “Silver Cup” on the 1D Ludique site.     1. Deploy your 9 fish.
 2. Advance, cover, devour, jump, but without letting your guard down.
 3. Bring one of your pieces to the opposite bank, it’s won!     In AQUATIKA, each player has nine pieces: three octopuses, three sharks and three flying fish. The game is very simple at first glance, but everyone chooses to arrange their pieces as they wish on their 9 squares, which can already change the situation. Offensive strategy? defensive? between the two ?…Up to you.   Then everyone moves a piece in turn: a move forward, to the side or diagonally, it’s up to you. Not too much of a surprise there, but when you get to play with the additional powers of each animal, your opponent's tactics can quickly be called into question: an octopus has the ability to cover another fish (then move with its prey), a shark will devour anyone who comes near (even another shark!),and a flying fish flying over the others (discreet but very effective…).   Bring a critter to the opposite bank and you're a winner! The average game length is 20 minutes, but you can catch an inattentive opponent in less than two minutes. Also, when two players keep a wait-and-see position, neither of them gets wet, and their brains are steaming while the battle in the middle begins to rage, then a game can last up to 45 minutes. In any case, as you never have the right to move your pieces back, there is always one that ends up reaching the opposite bank. This game smells like checkers, but it's not checkers! It's even more magical... This game has the flavor of chess, but it's not chess! It’s even more subtle… In short, it’s AQUATIKA, the tactical game of the 21st century (and the next)! AQUATIKA is fascinating for the simplicity of its rules, the balance of powers of the different pieces and its tactical richness. Once you take the bait you can't let go.   When the game author Alexandre Droit presented me with the model of this game, made with bottle caps, I immediately fell in love and immediately offered to publish it. However, it was the first time that I was preparing to publish a game that I had not designed myself. Alexandre showed great confidence in me, because other, more well-known publishers also wanted him.   It was a real pleasure and a great adventure to develop AQUATIKA together, first with the illustrator Martin Texier from the Emile Cohl school, and with Pauline Detraz for this second edition, and also to have it manufactured as close as possible. The pawns are made by a wood turner in the Jura whose workshops smell of beech, boxwood and resin! The boxes are made by a cardboard maker in Aube with great know-how.   The game appeals to both experienced adults and children, and is ideal for adult-child play. During the 2016 Essen (Germany) show, the publisher Aurum made no mistake in asking us for the license for South Korea. Since then, the game has enjoyed great success there and continues to gain new fans in Europe.