Lost: The Board Game, designed by Keith Tralins and developed by MegaGigaOmniCorp, is a strategy game that puts players on the island in the roles of their favorite characters.
Here's a general description of the game, published by Cardinal Industries and based on the television series Lost which airs on ABC, based on a discussion with Tralins.
Players Lost: The Game is for 2 to 8 players.
Components
17 character cards.
75 hexagonal tiles, each representing a different area on the island, make up the game board.
160 cards, including roughly 80 encounter cards, 40 event cards, and 40 equipment cards.
Additional components include basic and advanced rules, an exclusive Lost coin, dice, and player tokens.
The Characters
Players can choose from 17 of the Lost island's inhabitants: Ana-Lucia, Boone, Charlie, Claire, Eko, Hurley, Jack, Jin, Kate, Libby, Locke, Michael, Sawyer, Sayid, Shannon, Sun, and Walt.
Each character has a special ability; stronger characters also have a special drawback. Some characters also have a unique way they can win the game.
The Board
The board will be different every game. For beginners, a 16-hex island in a 4x4 grid is recommended -- which means that even after you play once, there will still be 59 more island tiles to explore in future games. A 4x4 grid, with two players, should take about an hour to play.
Advanced players can use more tiles and lay them out in any possible shape. Thus, the island will feature a different mix of tiles every game, and it could also have a different shape every game.
The island tiles feature images from various episodes of Lost.
The Cards
Collectively, the cards are known as Fate cards. There are three types of Fate cards.
The Encounter cards represent challenges that the island presents to the players. For example, adversaries such as the Others, the polar bear and the "Monster" are all found on Encounter cards. These cards also include challenges that require players to work together, such as providing food and building an S.O.S. sign in the sand.
The Event cards represent plot points. Players accumulate these cards and then use them at opportune times. Examples include the ability to steal equipment, introduce a new character into the game, and change a die roll.
The Equipment cards are just what they sound like: equipment the characters carry with them to use in various ways.
Noted comic book artist Bernard Chang provided artwork for the cards.
Gameplay
Lost: The Game incorporates elements of Talisman, Magic: the Gathering, Settlers of Catan and Chess, Tralins said.
The goal of each player is to become the Leader of the Oceanic Flight 815 survivors. To do this, you must eliminate other players by taking "leadership" of their characters. (Some characters have alternate win conditions listed on their character cards.)
However, there's not necessarily only one winner. Two or more players could, by agreement, work together and win together. In fact, some characters are designed to be more powerful when they're allied. Jin and Sun, for example, become much tougher to defeat if they're a partnership than if they're each on their own.
At the start of the game, the island tiles are mixed together and then placed on the table to form the board. All the tiles are face down at this point; tiles are turned face up when a character moves onto them.
When a tile is turned face up, the character who caused this to happen follows the instructions on that tile. Often, this will involve drawing a card.
Future Expansions
If the game sells well enough, expansions are a definite possibility. Tralins said expansions could be published to incorporate characters from future seasons, for example.
"A lot of late nights went into designing this game, but it was worth it," Tralins said in an interview. "I couldn't think of a better way to spend my time. I was super-excited. I hope it does really well so I can get back into it and do the first expansion. There's plenty of room for a lot of expansions."
Availability
Lost: The Board Game should be available at mass market retailers like Toys R Us and Wal-Mart starting in mid-August 2006.
There are two versions of the game. The basic version comes in a tin box. The deluxe edition comes in a replica silver Zero Halliburton briefcase (similar to the one that Kate and Sawyer found while swimming near the waterfall) emblazoned with the Lost logo. It's not yet clear where the deluxe edition will be sold.
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