Starship Titanica

A light-hearted, puzzle-filled romp through an artificially-intelligent spaceship that is trying to kill you.

Goal

Construct a magic circle than can encompass areas and groups of any size.

Strategy

A game of literal and figurative space exploration that uses text-based puzzles to create a narrative overlay for any location.

Starship Titanica is a collaborative puzzle-solving game for groups of 3-5 people. Players join the crew of the Titanica on its maiden voyage, only to realize that the artificial intelligence controlling much of the ship’s operations has seized control. The players must then race around the ship, confronting obstacles that the AI has created for them as they search for tools that might be useful in regaining control and rescuing the rest of the crew.

Players start the game in 1 of 5 roles on the ship, each with three associated tools. As they explore the space, they can discover different locations such as the Science Lab, the Airlock, and the Brig, each with its own unique and dangerous obstacle. The team must then engage in collaborative critical thinking to determine which tool is right for the job. Solving the puzzles will net a new tool that can be used to overcome other obstacles and eventually take on a series of more perilous challenges standing between the team and their fellow crew-members still trapped on The Bridge.

In order to accommodate a number of different team sizes, spaces, and timelines, the architecture of Starship Titanica is extensible. The difficulty of the final challenge can be tailored to require a different number of tools acquired from earlier obstacles, and tools can be traded or assembled between groups, creating opportunities for collaboration between large numbers of players.