One of our main goals was to have cooperation at the heart of the game, to represent the experience of working with different naval forces to find a hidden submarine.

So the players had to cooperate in order to achieve the same goal: Prevent the submarine from achieving his mission and escape. We didn’t want to have competition in the game so the threat, the submarine, played by himself according to simple rules. A part of his actions was hidden at the back of cards to best represent the discrete behaviour of submarines in real life. We decided that each player would have different gameplay and effect on the submarine that would complement the other player. It was a way to strengthen the communication and the cooperation between the two players. Also, the players could anticipate the submarine actions since they had the ability to look at the upcoming actions of the submarine. We did that to encourage the players to plan their actions ahead and also prepare for unexpected events. This cooperation was a success during the many playtests we did. For those, we chose players that didn’t know the game and the subject. I observed and took notes on several playtests during the project. We regularly tested the game with new players to check if it was understood and enjoyable.