The Spill (Kickstarter Edition)

Offshore rig, DeepWell•4, has blown out and the rupture is spilling crude oil into the ocean at an alarming rate! Your response team must work together, using your individual talents to avert an ecological disaster, one which threatens to contaminate marine life and devastate the ecosystem. The situation is dire and escalating by the minute, so there is no time to waste.

1. Contain the oil flowing from the rig
2. Remove what oil you can from the waters
3. Rescue the marine animals

The world is watching. The fate of the coast is in your hands!

This fully cooperative game, for 1-4 players, features a 4-way dice tower as the oil rig, which randomly drops oil dice onto the four quadrants of the game board. In this respect, the game is a reverse tower defense game, as players sail the perimeter trying to push back and contain the oil, remove dice from the water and save the sea life.

Communal resource cards are chosen by the team before the game begins and are then powered for use by either removing 3 oil dice from the game or saving a full set of 6 marine creatures.

Weather dice complicate matters adding new challenges for the round that restrict movement, drop more dice or increase the cost of operations.

It takes coordination and teamwork to win, as new oil dice are dropped at the beginning of every turn and the number of oil dice dropped increases over the course of the game.

If the team can accomplish all three objectives on their WIN Condition card and remedy any potential losing conditions on the board by the end of a given turn - they win. Otherwise the game will end when the 60 dice from the bag are exhausted or they are unable to correct one of the three losing conditions.

Contain the Oil. Save the Sea Life.

 The oil drilling platform in this game, DeepWell 4, doesn’t actually exist - but the environmental impact of uncontrolled oil releases into our oceans and waterways is all too real. According to the US Department of Energy, approximately 1.3 million gallons of oil are spilled each year. This figure does not take into account major spills and accidents, which increases that number dramatically. The Deepwater Horizon spill took 87 days to seal, spilling 134 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, making it the largest accidental oil spill in history.

Following the Deepwater Horizon, Gulf dolphins suffered from lung disease leading to a massive die off. In the four years that followed, dolphin birthrates plunged from the normal 80% to just 20%. An estimated 167,000 sea turtles perished. Shrimp and coral populations were hard hit. Birds were fouled and unable to fly.

Wildlife recovery, cleaning and rehabilitation is often an important part of oil spill response. However wildlife is difficult to find and catch, spills happen over wide areas, and some animals (like whales) are too big to recover. It is simply unrealistic to rescue all wildlife impacted during oil spills. And oil is only one of the challenges facing our oceans. It falls to us to be better stewards of our world, to hold companies accountable and to create policies that protect our planet. To learn more about safeguarding our oceans and what you can do to help, visit Oceana.org.