Taipan Board Game

You choose whether to build your domain by trading or by piracy, and both routes can win. Trade with friendlier captains, or brave enemy waters to make a high-value delivery. The other route is to steal a rival's ship or raid their islands.

Each turn's choices feed into the next, speeding up or slowing the growth of your domain. Ship upgrades and attributes let you shape your captain differently from game to game. The rules are short once learned, and a tutorial walks through them.

Matches can be played against other people or alone, and a session runs about half an hour. The game is a digital version of a tabletop prototype the creator spent two years testing, and building it exposed balance problems in the original that led to mechanics changes. The creator describes the AI help as assistance with code.