In Vanuatu, you are a Vanuatuan who wants to prosper during the eight turns of the game. In order to prosper, you have to manage with natural resources, rare items, vatus (local currency) and tourists. To earn money or prosperity points, you may also draw on the sand*, carry tourists all over Vanuatu islands, or trade cargo with foreign countries.
On each turn, the archipelago expands and you have to program your actions with five tokens. You put one or more of them on the chosen action spaces, and on your turn, you will only be able to play an action if you have the majority on its space. Thus, sometimes have to wait for other players to remove their tokens by playing their actions. If you are not in majority anywhere, you have to remove all of your tokens from an action and give up hope of playing this action. A good strategy lets you block other players; for example, they won't be able to sell fishes if they haven't caught them first – order matters! Islands and sea resources are rare, so be quick and take them first!
There is no such thing as a rich Vanuatuan. When you reach ten vatus, they automatically transform into 5 prosperity points and again, you are poor. Life is hard, but you may encounter ten men to help you; on each turn you choose one of them to increase your benefits from an action. As always, being the first player lets you choose before the others.
In short, Vanuatu is a strategy game of programming and majorities that features development, blocking, and a lot of interaction between players.
(*) Sand Drawing in Vanuatu belongs to the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity of the UNESCO.
- strong, place-specific embedding of economic activity
- conveys ideas about globalization and local practice
- feels historically grounded in a real Pacific nation
- mechanics can be clunky and dense
- assumes prior knowledge of Vanuatu, which may alienate some players
- Rising Waters expansion shifts focus away from base-game specificity
- island economy, export dynamics, and local practices within a global system
- Vanuatu, a contemporary Pacific island nation with historical colonial context and modern external linkages
- thematic and place-specific; grounded in local context though presented through a Eurogame lens
- Catan
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- contextual knowledge dependence — game relies on some local cultural knowledge; players encounter items and terms that may be unfamiliar
- export/market economy — players earn money by exporting goods (beef, copper, carver) and engaging in local markets
- Worker placement with bidding — players allocate workers to different economic roles; a multi-layer bid/commitment mechanic governs actions each turn
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Islands without islanders: there were villages and there were temples but there were no people.
- the game brands itself as a set of destruction game in the sense that it is responding to people coming to the island.
- the spirits can only act through fear.
- board games can also be an interesting like intervention to how we think about the world.
- this is actually what's like impacting life more immediately there and said they've made it the key thing when climate change in Vanuatu.