Description

Parched is a coaster-based board game in which two competing players race to irrigate their hop or coffee bean farm. The octagonal, coaster pieces are reorganized by opponents through a card laying mechanic to create a blue line of waterway edges from the water source to their respective end coaster. Trick-taking card play is augmented by action cards allowing players set up large changes in the board state, and the presence of event cards introduces a small element of randomness. Whatever the methods, the goal is simple: connect your farm to the water source through a series of irrigation channels. How hard can it be?

What is a coaster-based board game?
Parched has dual functionality as a game and set of coasters. The game is housed in a wooden display case that is intended to live out on a coffee table or bar top, so that sealed, wooden game tiles are always within reach to hold a drink. This novel idea isn't a gimmick, though, the functionality is a logical offshoot of the story behind the game itself.

The Story
Reseco is a country with a rich history of brewing coffee and beer; however, recent drops in rainfall and redirection of water to a burgeoning kale and avocado industry are causing ripples across an increasingly arid landscape. The people are parched and so are their crops: beans and hops. Determining where the limited water gets directed is problematic, to say the least. Koffee Kings and Best Buds Hops find themselves at the center of the problem. They have come together to solve the issue using what they have on hand, drinking vessels and coasters, to negotiate the direction of irrigation channels on their overlapping properties.

—description from the designer