A board-first adaptation of Alain Epron's Vanuatu, second edition (Quined Games, 2016). Artwork by Konstantin Vohwinkel, supplied by the publisher for this adaptation.
The repository is public; the game is listed on BGS as a beta. Supplied artwork and game materials remain the property of their respective rights holders; permission to use them for this adaptation is not a general redistribution license.
Node 24+, pnpm. pnpm install, pnpm build, pnpm dev (port 5246). pnpm test runs rules tests; install the browser once with pnpm exec playwright install chromium; pnpm test:browser checks the viewer.
BGS supplies the shared colorBlind and sound preferences. Color-blind mode adds player symbols and K/C/B resource labels; game sounds give a quiet confirmation after successful moves. The toggles in Rules & help update the same BGS account settings. Standalone practice stores its own preferences locally.
Marker retrieval is manual by default, including the last unusable action stack. Each player can opt into automatic retrieval when retrieving one stack is the only available move in Rules & help; this setting is saved separately for each game. Automatic retrieval never skips optional treasure exchanges or chooses between multiple stacks. Guided lessons always use manual retrieval.
Supported scope: 2–5 players, all eleven characters, the official two-player variant, optional Rising Waters, replay and finished-game analysis, bots, BGS chat, player hover cards and board thumbnails.
Component uncertainties and implementation validation are recorded in the beta report.
Read the beta report before public release: the supplied ocean values and one outer board location still need confirmation. Bots are suitable for practice and automated coverage, not a claim of strong competitive play.
Guided lessons are available locally at /?lesson=planning, /?lesson=full-round, /?lesson=fishing and /?lesson=islands. The full-round lesson follows every phase through changing majorities, lost opportunities and end-of-round bonuses. Add ?players=2&new, ?water&new or ?hotseat&new for practice variants. Practice progress stays in this browser. The viewer defaults to English; French can be selected in Help or in the BGS game preferences.
Release: pnpm build && pnpm test && pnpm test:browser, then node scripts/publish-beta.mjs. The publisher reads the admin token from ~/.bgs. Before release it keeps the version in beta and ensures the game is listed; once public, it only replaces the engine and viewer and keeps every other setting. node test/simulations.mjs runs the longer complete-game sweep.
Viewer releases: see uploading the complete viewer build.