by Arcadia Jacob, Camille Boelt Hindsgaul and Ross Patrick Byrne
In The Poly Agenda, you play as members of a polyamorous relationship. Work together to strengthen your bond across a year of dates as you juggle each other’s schedules and interests, manage stress, and make sure to value both your relationships to each other and your own personal joy.
Presentation
- Duration: 120-150 minutes
- Player count: 3-4
- Language: English
Relationships are about teamwork. If you are not careful and attentive, both you and your partners may end up stressed out and unfulfilled. In The Poly Agenda, players each have their own sets of likes, dislikes, and schedule conflicts. The challenge is to go on dates you and your partners like (or at least do not dislike) on days that do not clash with your schedules.
Take that challenge into your own hands by playing polyomino shape cards from your hand and physically filling in those same shapes with dry-erase markers on the calendar board on your turn. Days marked with symbols are “dates” of one of five types. Fill in a date to host it, or fill in the days above, below, or to either side of the date to attend in the morning, evening, or whenever you´re available, respectively.
The time you attend a date and whether or not you are hosting affect both your joy and your stress. You get joy by hosting or attending dates of types you like—with hosting generating more joy than attending. Stress, on the other hand, is generated by hosting a date you dislike, going on a date that clashes with your schedule conflicts, not gaining enough joy in a season, and by not going on enough dates with your partners.
Stress tokens rack up quickly if you are not careful, especially as the calendar fills out and you are running out of space and dates to go on. If by the end of any of the game’s four seasons, you have accumulated too much stress, all players lose the game.
To win the game, you must reach the end of the fourth season, when the points you’ve gained from joy and from shared dates will tell you how solid your relationship is.
The Poly Agenda is a game where communication is key. Keeping track of both your own and your partners’ likes, dislikes, and schedules is bound to feel highly relatable to anyone who has tried to organise any type of hang-out with a group of friends or lovers.
About the designer
This is Arcadia’s first time participating at Fastaval but she has been interested in game design and board games since a young age. Some of her favourites include Nemesis, Wingspan, 7 Wonders, and anything with strong theming and interesting strategic decision making. The Poly Agenda is exactly within this range as it is a cooperative experience which explores a unique subject. In addition, she is currently working on a co-op game about the 1910 race to the South Pole of the Terra Nova Expedition called 90° South.
Camille loves a variety of board games but her truest love lies with escape rooms, puzzles, and detective games—a love not wholly unrelated to her day job as a proofreader of documents about Irish court cases. She is also an enthusiastic roleplayer and loves to discuss the merits of different systems. Camille’s first Fastaval game was Village Pride in 2024 and though she has worked on other projects since, The Poly Agenda is by far her most ambitious game to date. She hopes you will like it.
Ross is a biologist by profession but has loved playing board games and roleplaying games for as long as he can remember. He spent countless evenings and weekends playing chess in school and discovered more modern board games in college where he was introduced to classics such as Carcassonne, Betrayal, and Pandemic. He is a fan of strategy and cooperative games and adores board games with a strong narrative. This will be Ross’s second time at Fastaval, having presented Daytrip last year. This year, he is very excited to share The Poly Agenda with you.
