Here Be Dragons (v1.0)

A deranged alternate history of the Age of Discovery turns Columbus’s famous voyage into the cleaned-up ending of a much stranger campaign. Here Be Dragons is a satirical turn-based strategy game in which royal authorities send an expendable “Avant Armada” across monster-infested waters before any respectable explorer can claim the glory. Its living parchment map writhes with threats, while krakens, leviathans, tritons, ghost ships, mermaids, and predatory whales transform historical naval travel into a grimly comic monster hunt. The tone balances nautical adventure with absurd bureaucratic secrecy, portraying its captains as unstable misfits whose victories are deliberately erased from history.

Each encounter revolves around a dice-activation system that makes every turn a tactical allocation puzzle. Dice determine which actions your captains and ships can perform, forcing you to weigh attacks against healing, fleet improvements, and other crucial responses when a sea creature begins overwhelming the board. Sailing across the map means choosing routes, confronting roaming dangers, and preparing for battles where positioning and the order of your actions matter as much as raw luck. Ink acts as a valuable resource, and Errata lets you alter the rules or manipulate a difficult situation, giving players a way to recover from poor rolls instead of simply accepting defeat. Progress comes from strengthening the fleet and using each oddball captain’s potential efficiently enough to clear a path through increasingly hostile waters.

The living-map presentation is the clearest standout: rather than using a conventional ocean battlefield, the game makes the chart itself feel like an ancient document infected by maritime nightmares. Its dice-driven tactics share a little DNA with tabletop strategy games, but the playful historical fiction and rule-bending Errata system give it a personality closer to a darkly humorous storybook. Fans of turn-based planning who enjoy randomness with tools to control it should find plenty to like, especially if they prefer compact tactical encounters over sprawling empire management. Newcomers can grasp the basic loop quickly, while strategy veterans get the most from mastering action economy and saving their best rule changes for disastrous turns.