Pirate Partage is a silly cooperative physical game about what happens when people have to give up their primary means of communication. Four pirate captains have together acquired a large amount of loot, and made it back to their hidden lagoon. But the royal navy is hot on their tail, and will arrive any minute. The pirates have decided to split up into four separate boats, and each will go their separate way. But first they need to split up the loot in a very particular way, and fast!
Too complicate matters, each player has their own pirate handicap: Capitain Skulleyes can’t see, Captain Lockjaw can't speak, Captain Bonedust can't use their hands (though they are good with chopticks), and Captain Tins can't hear a thing. It’s up to the players to find a way to communicate nonetheless in the limited time before the navy arrives to take back their spoils.
The game puts the players in the tricky situation of having a real handicap, yet having to collaborate intensively. Along playing, players develop personal and collaborative strategies enlightening how, despite handicaps, people can be efficient and full scale social actors based on special efforts, awareness, social inclusion and collaboration.
A bunch of stuff is needed:
- An Android tablet or phone, with the mobile app installed
- Eye patch for Captain Skulleyes (travel mask works well)
- Mouth mask for Captain Lockjaw (scarf will also do)
- Closed headphones for Captain Tins
- Chopsticks for Captain Bonedust
- Treasure: 32 jewels, 32 parchments, 32 cannonballs and 32 bottles (of rum)
- A set of Pirate Partage cards, made so that Captain Skulleyes can play through touch
- Four treasure chests or boats
- Give each player a treasure chest and 8 pieces of each kind of treasure (32 per player in all).
- Start the app, press "Shuffle", and distribute the cards and roles as described by the app.
- Press "Play" and let the fun begin!
The app is developed in Unity 3D. You can use a free license to develop it.
The card generation script is written in Python. The card designs are done in Adobe InDesign.
The original prototype was a coin-and-card game https://github.com/CyberCRI/PiratePartage created by By Garry Williams, Vincent Ducos and Jesse Himmelstein during the Diversity Game Jam at the Mozilla offices in Paris, with Gamelier and Jam Shaker.
In the current version, Rahika Beaume did the graphic design for the mobile app as well as the cards and props. Liburn Jupolli made the music. Jesse Himmelstein did the programming and lead the game design.
The code is available under the MIT license.
The smoke effects come from the White Smoke Particle System asset by Xenosmash Games, who gave us permission to include it here.