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Great Western Trail creator’s board game, Maracaibo, is getting an app version this month

Become a mobile merchant.

Complete a legacy campaign set in the 17th century Caribbean with the upcoming app version of Maracaibo, a board game created by Great Western Trail designer Alexandra Pfister.

Based on the 2019 board game, the Maracaibo app sees one to four players becoming sailors who dream of building their own trading businesses across the Caribbean islands. Set to be released on both Android and iOS platforms, the digital board game version of Maracaibo will include the legacy campaign featured in the tabletop original - meaning that the outcome of each game session will have an impact on the next one a group plays - alongside a standard quick play mode that will have players passing the device they’re using to play the app to each other between turns.

The app version of Maracaibo will also feature a solo game mode that will see players taking on AI opponents with five different difficulty levels to select from. For those players who are not familiar with Maracaibo the app will contain a tutorial designed to teach new players howow the game works.

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Maracaibo is a board game for one to four players that takes place across the Caribbean islands during the 17th century, with players taking the role of ambitious merchants attempting to gain favour with three rival nations. Despite being set during a time in which the Caribbean people were being exploited and enslaved by colonialist powers, Maracaibo puts players in the shoes of traders whose ambitions lie in making profit from trading and delivering goods across the islands.

Throughout the game, players will have various ways of pursuing victory from completing quests - which also involve narrative choices - to exploring the Caribbean islands, to focusing on growing their trading business. Though players begin the game with their own individual objectives, which provide rewards if completed, they’re free to sail wherever they believe will benefit them the most, being sure to survive the various pirate attacks along the way.

Maracaibo app screenshot 2

Besides designing Maracaibo and Great Western Trail, Pfister is also responsible for creating Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King - a board game about building Celtic kingdoms - Blackout: Hong Kong, a title that has players managing a large scale loss of electricity across the city, and the sci-fi themed board game Cloud Age.

Maracaibo was originally published by Game’s Up, a studio that’s otherwise best known for releasing the civilisation building game The Arrival and historical board game Carthago, with the publisher partnering with Spiralburst Studio - a software developer - to release the app version of the board game.

The Maracaibo app is set to be released on Android and iOS on December 20th, with the retail price for both versions yet to be confirmed.

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Alex Meehan avatar
Alex Meehan: After writing for Kotaku UK, Waypoint and Official Xbox Magazine, Alex became a member of the Dicebreaker editorial family. Having been producing news, features, previews and opinion pieces for Dicebreaker for the past three years, Alex has had plenty of opportunity to indulge in her love of meaty strategy board games and gothic RPGS. Besides writing, Alex appears in Dicebreaker’s D&D actual play series Storybreakers and haunts the occasional stream on the Dicebreaker YouTube channel.
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