Hidden Ark

About this board game

Hidden Ark is a 2023 board game for 1–4 players, with games lasting around 90 minutes. As a member of a global science team, you work to rescue critically endangered fish species and help prevent their complete extinction.

Each player leads a Hidden Ark science team, developing the knowledge and infrastructure needed for successful rescue operations. Build science stations, construct rescue vessels, improve your expertise in different research fields, and coordinate your fleet across the vast oceans.

On each turn, players draft opportunity tokens that provide research studies, funding, and technological upgrades. You then choose an action row on your player board and perform its available actions. As your board improves, its action rows become more powerful, giving your team greater capabilities throughout the game.

• Build science stations and rescue vessels.
• Research different areas of science.
• Upgrade your player board with new abilities.
• Move vessels to species cards and carry out rescue operations.

To save a species, move a rescue vessel onto its card and meet the required research conditions. A successful operation lets you keep the card for victory points and benefits, while also advancing your wider conservation effort.

The game ends when there are no opportunity tokens left to draft. Victory points come from rescued species cards, upgrades, awards, science stations, and rescue vessels. The player with the most points wins, making every investment in research, infrastructure, and ocean rescue an important part of your path to success.