Review: Voyages

You set sail on your shipping empire armed with three six sided dice and your pen. Will you be the most famous captain on the seas? Can you defeat Dread and live to talk about it? Will you have the most gold at the end of your voyage? Voyages from Postmark Games is a new innovative roll and write game that will answer all of these questions and more. Prepare as we set sail for the newest print and play on the sea.

Voyages is a print and play game. For those not familiar with with this segment of the hobby, Print and Play games are games you print on your printer at home rather than heading to the Friendly local game store and bringing home a game. There are folks who do Print and Play as a hobby unto itself and basically recreate those games that you see at the FLGS. This is not that Voyages can be printed on one page with low ink options also.

Voyages came out on kickstarter in the fall of 2021 and fulfilled right before the Christmas holiday. With the world in the throws of a shipping crisis still Print and Play offers up a solution to that with no shipping at all just print the PDF at home and you are playing without ever changing into real pants. This will defiantly fill a need during the lingering parts of the shipping crisis and the pandemic. This game can be played solo or with basically as many as you want.

So what is Voyages? Its a roll and write game where you travel the seas, delivering goods, and fighting dread. Along the way you will collect more sailors, relics and visit settlements. The Voyages game is contained on one sheet of paper that has a hex grid map and around that various trackers for duties, goods, and sailors. The map is scattered with vary intuitive symbols to help you along your voyage.

...no shipping at all just print the PDF at home and you are playing without ever changing into real pants.

The game is played by rolling three six sided dice. I found a great reason to break out my pirate dice. The dice are then allocated by each player to direction, amount of spaces moved and duties. There is a wind-rose on the edge of the map that shows you the direction that each number represents for direction. The second die you allocate is movement thats simply move in the direction you choose the amount rolled. You will stop if you run into an island, reef or the map edge. Finally the third number is used for ships duties. There is a cross word looking section under the map. You cross off one box with the matching number. When you have completed a row you get a bonus. When you are playing this game with multiple players you just take turns rolling the dice but everyone uses the same numbers just not necessarily in the same way.

The object of the game is to become the sailor with the most gold. you get gold by defeating dread, delivering goods and a few other ways. The end game is triggered when a player has marked the third legendary star on the tracker. Then one final round is played. There are many ways to get the legendary stars from sailing with 12 crew to exploring the map and getting to the space with the star. The second map that came with the kickstarter bundle is called Marauder's Reef and rather than a focus on shipping goods its focus is on defeating the marauders on the map.

The game is a free form sandbox game that lets each player choose their own way of getting gold. This is a fun solo play or with a group of friends any size. This game is especially suited for playing over Zoom or the like as all that needs to be communicated is the die rolls. I really like this game and it has inspired some design ideas for my own games. If you did not kick start the game Postmark Games is currently working on a wider release for everyone else. Sign up for the email list and get the update on when that will be available.

Players: 1+

Year Published: 2021

Recommended Ages: 12+

Time to Play: 15-30