A.D.A.P.T. Board game review

Adapt

Dear friends and fans of board game industry! You know that we like to review not only some mainstream and traditional board games and today we have a completely indie project created by John Wrot! Let’s take a closer look at this work of art…

Game Contents

This picture shows the contents of the game box. As we can see, it’s quite compact and you can take it anywhere you want to play!

Adapt - Components

Gameplay

A.D.A.P.T. is a mind-blowing game which has cards and dice mechanics. Players have to adapt a few tiny Guppy Fish with help of body parts as fast as they can in to become the Master Fish!

Game Setup

The game setup and contents is quite easy and user-friendly as you can see on this picture.

Adapt - Setup

There is a full set of 7 polyhedral Dice for each player. They are – d4, d6, d8, 2 d10s, a d12 and a d20.

First, each player has a Guppy card and Experience Die (which is d20). You need to place the Guppy card face up as your Body and set each Experience Die to 1. Place all the unused Guppy cards aside.

Then, shuffle the rest of the cards into a deck and place it in the Common Play Area. Deal cards face up into the Gene Stream and star with the highest numbered slot and leave a space for a Discard Pile at the end.

The last thing to do is to deal cards face up into the Gene Stream, starting at the highest numbered slot, with space for a Discard Pile at the end.

Rules

In this section we will briefly look at the turn order, possible actions and so on.

Turn order:

  • In the beginning of every turn you get +3 Experience for surviving in rounds.
  • Experience can be tracked on the d20 which you should keep near your Personal Gene Pool (PGP).
  • Take 1 Action from the list of Action Options (see below)
  • Cycle the Gene Stream
  • End turn. The next player, in clockwise order, takes the next Player Turn.

Action Options:

  • Adapt
  • Buy
  • Attack
  • Special Action
  • Wipe the Gene Stream

Adaptation & Buying Rules:

Adapt - Player Mat

You can only Adapt new Bodies by +1 level at a time. Bodies and Parts are kept in your Personal Gene Pool (PGP).

You can only Adapt Parts that are equal to or less than your Body’s Level +2.

(Example: As a Level 2 Body, you can equip any Level 1, 2, 3, or 4 Part except Level 5. Level 5 Parts can be Adapted only after a Level 3 Body)

Attacking rules

Roll the die which is shown on your Fish’s body. (Guppies can’t attack unless they have at least +2 Ferocity Adapted; Guppy Attack die = any die; Odd = 1; Even = 2.)

  • Add your Total Ferocity score (totaling this value from your Body and all Adapted Parts) to the roll for your Attack Total.
  • Compare your Attack Total vs. the Target Fish’s Total Survival score (totaling this value from their Body and all Adapted Parts).
  • If your Attack Total (AT) is greater than your Target’s Total Survival (TS): you deal an amount of Damage equal to the amount you beat their Survival by PLUS your Total Lethality score (TL), up to a max of +4. Example: Your Attack Total = 12, while their TS = 10; you deal 2 Damage, plus any Lethality you may have, up to a max Lethality bonus of 4.
  • Track your Damage Taken (Damage for short) using a d10 on your Body Card, when Damage exceeds 9, Damage should be kept track of with any unused die as the tens number, and the Damage d10 as the 1’s (see dice diagram).
  • If your Attack Total is less than your Target’s Total Survival: always moving forward, you gain an amount of Experience equal to the amount you failed by, to a max of 5. (Example: Your Attack Total = 9, while their TS = 12; you gain 3 Experience).
  • If your Attack Total is exactly equal to their TS, you deal 1 Damage, plus Lethality, and gain a flat +2 Experience.

Victory condition

The player who defeats all the other fishes is the winner!

Adapt - Clownfish

Final Thoughts

We have a lot of impressions about this game and we want to share them with you. We’ll start from positive moments:

  • Interesting melee and experience system
  • It is good that this game has full set of dice (maybe people will buy this game only because of dice, who knows)
  • Cool elements of RPG and upgrades of fish
  • There are a lot of features available for each fish and they are all usable in the game process

Though this game has a great melee system and other RPG elements, it has some problems:

  • Difficult English because it’s sometimes difficult to understand some points in the rules (for example, Status Trackers)
  • «Hide» and other special features give very small value over d10 dice
  • Also, we would like to suggest the healing idea for damaged fish. For example, in «Elder Sign» if you go back to base you heal on 1 point or more if you use your experience points. In A.D.A.P.T. you can heal only if you have the appropriate special ability. Maybe it would be better and more balanced for the game to use the healing all the time, using experience points?

To sum it up, A.D.A.P.T. is surely worth of attention and playing because it’s one of the craziest games we ever played! For people who like RPG elements this would a greatest present and also your kids will like it! Strongly recommended! 9/10!