Clockwork Corsairs - pirate adventure game *New Card Images Updated*

While, superficially it could be compared to Pirate's Cove, but I expect it plays out quite differently and hits a different price point.

The island cards could use some cleanup: more icons would make it much easier to read the table, as would emphasizing the possible routes (maybe incorporate the compass points as part of the card border rather than a small icon). Also, Mutiny does not have a second N.

Another point is that we are seeing a lot of the Corsairs, but almost no Clockwork (other than the S.P.U.D suit). The prevailing wind/current mechanic which is core to the game actually directly works against the steampunk theme, as the addition of steam in boats meant you could partially ignore such concerns. Maybe you could work this kind of override mechanic into the game? ie. spend 2 Steam to ignore prevailing winds for a turn. You might also want to do quick vocab swaps like Mechanic instead of Blacksmith.

Though perhaps not the answers you're looking for, I would say that hinging your assessment on the theme elements is not very useful. If your game exactly mirrored the gameplay elements of a game about dinosaurs, the fact that it is steampunk pirates won't mean it's a new game. Or approaching it from the other direction, most pirate games will include ships and gold and sailing around, so if you were using theme, even mildly modified theme as your basis of evaluation, you'd be "just another" pirate game. If you call the gold "cogs" instead, it's still clear that it's the "booty" within that particular trope, and the different word wouldn't serve to differentiate. Mechanics are really the distinguishing feature.

Does that mean you should try and evaluate every game in the world? No. Realistically, it means you should design your game to be exactly what you want it to be, and as long as you don't MEAN to copy someone else's design, you (in all likelyhood) won't end up doing so. You could say that you don't want to compete with something that's already out there, but between now and when your game hits the shelves, there will probably be HUNDREDS of new games that come out. Even if you took into account everything currently in print, you can't anticipate what will be in the market even a few months in the future. More importantly, if you really make a great game, it will do well regardless of passing similarities.

Also (not trying to be rude, just trying to succinctly quash a common misconception), games aren't "card/board hybrids". That's a core misunderstanding of what components are. If the "cards" were tiles instead, I'd wager you wouldn't have called it a hybrid; and I also wager there would be little or no difference in actual play, other than that cards are slightly easier to shuffle and tiles are slightly easier to build a modular board out of. "Board game" as a term is colloquially used to mean all such tabletop games, inclusive of "card games", because trying to classify games based on what are essentially interchangeable types of components doesn't serve much function.