Reef Stakes is the first marine-themed, role-playing card game in Malaysia. Designed by young professionals in the conservation workspace, the game is designed to mimic real-life stakeholder relationships, introduce some of Malaysia's most iconic marine species, and highlight threats to coral reefs. The game goes along two tracks: nature and development.
To begin, each player chooses one of six roles (conservationist, developer, natural resource manager, tourism operator, politician and fisherman) at random. Each role is assigned three specific missions to achieve in the game which corresponds to priorities in real life. For example, all three of the conservationist's priorities are related to nature while the tourism operator is interested in both nature and development.
Seven cards are distributed to each player. The building up of the game revolves around a "rock" card where players build in either the nature track or the development track (level 1 to level 4). To win the game, players have to play all three specific mission cards (level 5) on the board. However, since some priorities overlap, players have to communicate, work together, or even sabotage to place their best cards on the table. Sabotage comes in the form of scenario cards that thwart the advancement of a track.
—description from the designer