New Game Round-up: Find Treasure, Assist Charles Darwin, and Visit The Shores of Tripoli

In 1820, there were uprisings in Peru, so the Spanish government decided to move its treasure from Lima to Mexico for safekeeping. The crew of the ship transporting the loot turned pirate and hid the treasure on the Island of Cocos. Now YOU are trying to find it, but you'll need to share some information with your fellow pirates to make sure you find it before the Spanish catch you!

In the challenging deduction board game Loot of Lima, the Island of Cocos has 24 locations: 8 on the shore, 8 in the forest, and 8 in the mountains; the treasure is hidden in two of these locations. The game has a token for each of these locations, and at the start of the game, two tokens as placed back in the box (with these tokens indicating where the treasure is hidden). The rest of the tokens are then passed out evenly to the players; these represent places you have already searched and know where the treasure is not hidden.

Each turn, players roll three 12-sided dice to determine which questions they can ask their opponents. For example, how many locations have you searched between the southeast and the northwest? Or, how many locations in the forest have you searched between the west and the south? Players use the answers to these questions to build overlapping clues, figure out all the locations that have already been searched, and eventually discover which locations haven't been searched (and thus where the treasure is hidden).

In 1801, a fledgling nation with a small navy and an even smaller treasury faced its first real international crisis: piracy, kidnapping, and the privations of the Barbary states of the Mediterranean. To meet this challenge, Thomas Jefferson launched an expedition to punish the Barbary Pirates which would come to be known as the First Barbary War (1801-1805). The exploits of the Navy and Marine Corps in this conflict would be immortalized in the Marine Corps Hymn.

The Shores of Tripoli tasks two players to recreate this swashbuckling episode from early U.S. history. As the United States, you will pressure Tripolitania and its allies to allow free movement of American commerce or face the consequences. As the Pasha of Tripoli, your aim is to continue the lucrative piracy of the fearsome corsairs while also countering the American threat on land and sea.

The Shores of Tripoli is a low complexity, card-driven game for two players (with solitaire rules).