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Pocket Nautilus

Par Word Forge Games

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6.6 BoardGameGeek

Statut actuel

Pledge Manager ouvert Fin de campagne : 15/09/2026

Fonds récoltés : 44 670 €

Coopératif Guerre Jeu de dés Jeux de cartes Science Fiction Solo

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Pocket Nautilusis a solo dice and card game based on Jules Verne's 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas'. It places you in command of the famous submarine, 'Nautilus', as it roams the deepest oceans in search of adventure.

You must battle warships of the British and American Navies, monsters of the deep, and much much more. Will you sink your foes before they destroy you?
And as you fight for your survival, you can explore both underwater and above water locations.
Every time you defeat a foe or complete an adventure you have the chance to upgrade your ship or diving team.

This game is called 'Pocket Nautilus' for a reason. It is a small game, designed to be played in a small space and to be carried easily in your bag. It is all about being a fun, compact, transportable solo game.

Pocket Nautilus is a small footprint game using up to 15 cards and a number of dice used both to roll and keep count of life totals

Alongside a 20 page rulebook and full colour box, your pledge will get you:

Additionally, for Pocket Landship fans, we have created a brand-new expansion called Pocket Landship: Desperate Hour, based on the mechanics introduced in Pocket Nautilus. Inside this 18 card pack, you'll find 3 modules:

Infiltration, where you send Shock Troops into Mech-producing facilities to spy and sabotage the invaders. Includes rules and 10 cards.
The MegaMech, a powerful final multi-card enemy to defeat. This module consists of four cards.
Bonus content: New co-op rules.

NOTE: These cards will be made to the same specification as Pocket Landship 2nd Edition with the same manufacturer.

The demo set rules for Pocket Nautilus can be found here. The game is quick to learn, but hard to master.

There are lots of great videos of 'how to play' for Pocket Landship here. Remember, the basic mechanics of the two 'Pocket' games is the same, check these out.

The Nautilus, Enemy and Location cards are all Tarot sized. Crew and Nemo cards are Poker sized.

Nautilus Cards

You start with 3 Nautilus cards, the Hull, the Prow and a Diving Team. These cards are double-sided. They begin on their basic side, but you can flip them later once you upgrade them. This can happen by defeating enemy cards and obtaining Key Words. There are multiple options for each card type, so no two games is ever the same.

Enemy Cards

The Enemy cards are single sided and placed face down, to be revealed when they are on the front line. As with Nautilus cards, there are many different enemies in the game, each with their own skills and powers. Some can move around, some affect your crew, but all force you to adapt your tactics. A few enemies are even "timed": they can't be attacked, but will leave on their own after a number of turns.

When you defeat any enemy, you gain key words which, when used in combination, can be used to upgrade or repair your Nautilus cards.

A the end of the game, once all enemies are destroyed, you have the option to face the "final boss": the Kraken, a monstrous 3-card beast.

Exploration

Since Jules Verne's original novel is about charting the unknown, Pocket Nautilus would be incomplete without letting you discover strange new places. During a game, as you fend off enemy ships with your submarine, you have the choice to keep your diving team close by to help you against the attackers, or you can send it to a Location Card, risking it all for potentially great rewards.

Nemo and Crew Cards

While both Nemo cards and Crew cards are single use (they are discarded after being played), they offer different types of advantages.

Crew cards give you a useful and sometimes powerful effect against your enemies. Some will even help when exploring locations. They represent various Nautilus crewmembers and famous characters from the Jules Verne novel like Professor Aronnax, Conseil, and Harpooner Ned Land.
Nemo cards affect the Nautilus itself and represent the complex and often contradictory nature of Captain Nemo. They use a novel mechanic where their effect depends on the current state of the Nautilus. Nemo cards start on their "calm" side (colored) but when your Hull is reduced to 2 or less health, they are flipped to their "agitated" side (black and white), revealing a much more potent effect. Can you hold your nerve during battle to let your Nemo card become more powerful?

Pocket Nautilus is the second game in Scott's Pocket duology. The first, is the highly successful Pocket Landship.

Pocket Landship started in 2017 as a 'nine-card game' designed for the BoardGameGeek.com design contest. It won 1st place for Best Wargame, and 3rd place for best overall (hence a Bronze Golden Geek Award). Since then, Pocket Landship has had 1000s of recorded plays from 100s of different players in more than 26 countries around the world have played, rated, and/or commented on the game on BoardGameGeek.com.

The seed for Pocket Nautilus was planted when Scott read Kevin J. Anderson’s entertaining book “Captain Nemo – The Fantastic Adventures of a Dark Genius”. The seed sprouted as Scott read Jules Verne’s classic book, and played Chris Taylor’s excellent game “Nemo’s War”. When Scott found Andrew King's visual depictions of Jules Verne's 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas', he decided to not just reskin Pocket Landship, but add a new upgrading mechanism as well.

It wasn't long before Mark Rapson at Word Forge Games got excited and started to work with Scott and Andrew to garner more depth for the game. Then along came project manager Emmanuel Aquin (D-Day Dice), a long-time fan of Verne, who created the graphic design and worked on producing new rules with Scott, pushing the project further into Vernian territory. The collaboration resulted in the exploration/discovery mechanics, the calm/agitated Nemo flip cards and produced some unique enemies like the Kraken, allowing Pocket Nautilus to become its own game, similar to Pocket Landship but different on many levels.

Pocket Nautilus will feature 'splashing' cover art by Mirco Paganassi, and internal art by Andrew King and Emmanuel Aquin.

The following Stretch Goals, when unlocked, will be applied to the Pocket Nautilus product. The targets are for the entire campaign's value:

The following Stretch Goals, when unlocked, will be applied to the Pocket Landship: Desperate Hour product. The targets are in units of Pocket Landship: Desperate Hour pledged for. These pledges are calculated from all relevant pledge levels and the add ons.

Click on the image to read Gamingtrend's review of the Pocket Nautilus Demo Set

"The next day I was going to set up a different game to play, but I ended up setting up Pocket Landship instead. And that is when I knew that this game was a hidden gem." - Cardboard Clash - Review for One

"[Pocket Landship] is a great game to pass the time whenever you have a moment to spare." - Stidjen Plays Solo Blog

"Such a great solo game. I originally reviewed Pocket Landship [9] years ago. It's now even better and so hard to win. Thrilling to play." - Glenn Flaherty, Boardgames & Bourbon.

"Small, fast, and light: Pocket Nautilus is a slick solo game. More games should let you stab Krakens with submarines" - Andy Giovanni, GamingTrend.com

And a review of Pocket Landship in French by Dystopeek

And a review and playthrough of Pocket Landship in Italian by La Tana dei Goblin

Player Comments about Pocket Landship on BGG:

"This surprisingly simple game offers a lot more strategy than one would think. How can I best apply my dice to both protect my units and apply the most damage to the enemy? Do I sacrifice a die to heal my Cannon, or do I roll that third die to take out that pesky center Mech? Do I Hunker Down to protect my Hull, or choose Adrenaline to get a fourth die next turn? The options change with every turn, and once other cards come into play with a random setup, the playability increases tenfold" - jP J

"-- winning at higher levels is all about knowing when to deviate from what appears to be the obvious play" - Rseater

"My sessions seem to involve more and more plays at a time ... Very happy I found this, kudos to the designer for making this interesting little solo game!" - Olafslomp

"I have about 50 plays logged of PL with the PNP version and this one. It is still one of my favorite solo games" - Frankie Bones

Scott Allen Czysz (pronounced chish) has been designing games since 2015. He started by designing mostly solo games for BoardGameGeek design contests, being inspired by designers like Todd Sanders. Scott is usually working on a game design or two, and thinking about one or two more. He chats about those here: Narrow Gate Games - Scott Allen Czysz's Game Design Blog. Scott currently resides in Colorado, USA with his wonderful wife / primary gaming partner / hiking partner, two cats, and several small trees hoping to someday grow up to become bonsais.

Pocket Nautilus is fully designed and ready to print. We are hoping to add some extra content as we progress through this campaign. When we unlock the stretch goals we will start working on them. As such, we expect to be close to print ready for all within a month or two of the KS completion. We will go to print straight away. Since the game only includes cards and regular dice, our expectation (from experience) is that printing and shipping to us takes 3-4 months. Fulfilment will then take between a week and a couple of months depending on how close you are to the UK.

Everything Word Forge Games does, including Pocket Nautilus and Pocket Landship, is created by humans and Emmanuel. No AI-generated content has been used in this project. You can rest assured this will be the case for everything Word Forge Games produces, past, present and future. As Captain Nemo would say, "A.I. be damned!".

UK and US backers will receive free shipping and all other destinations will receive an equivalent discount off of the actual shipping cost. Your P&P (if it's needed) will be collected as part of this campaign, and we will collect your addresses via a very quick KS questionnaire just before we are ready to fulfil.

We will ship from the UK (GMS Hobby Games logistics) and US (Last Mile Logistics). For the EU we will ship from the UK DDP (Delivered Duty Paid, IOSS registered). We have local hubs in Canada and ANZ which means shipping will be less than if we sent directly from the UK, but getting the pledge rewards in country does take an extra 2-3 months compared to the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, import laws and customs in some countries have made it impossible for us to ship to them. We cannot ship to: China, Turkey, Israel, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Russia and Afghanistan.

We will ship your reward before we offer the products to distribution, at exhibitons or for general sale in your country.

It is your responsibility to give us your address in a timely fashion and keep an eye on the updates. If you do not, you may not receive your pledge rewards or may need to pay more for shipping - as we will miss our opportunity for partner shipping.

Please read the FAQ for how we handle the pledges of those that complete the questionnaire after deadline.

Be cool:

We are asking you to help us make a cool thing happen, as such we believe we are a team working together to that end. This Kickstarter is not a preorder. Be nice! We won't tolerate any abuse or rudeness.

Refund policy:

Please see our FAQ section for our refund policy.

Want Pocket Nautilus? Make a pledge! We don't know when or if this product will ever go into retail. So if you want it, back it now! Captain Nemo will never thank you, but we will!