Cork (Cortiça, in Portuguese. /kuɾˈti.sɐ/) can be used to make a variety of products and Portugal is the world’s largest producer of cork. Cork Oak trees take 25-30 years to mature, and their bark is extracted every 9 years. Play as competing farmers, aiming to harvest the most corks.

Cortiça is a miniature worker placement game. Every round players place their workers, deciding the actions they will take. The actions are resolved from left to right. When an action is resolved the worker is placed in the stack.

After all actions are resolved, the player whose worker is at the bottom of the stack chooses one active action to rest; it will not be available to use in the next round. The previous rested action becomes active again.

In the next round, the players draw and place the workers from the stack, one by one. Play continues until a player has at least 6 cork after all actions are resolved at the end of a round. The player with the most cork wins.

Cortiça is available at PNP Arcade!

Cortiça was designed for Button Shy’s design challenge. It made it to the 10 finalists out of 150+ games. Cortiça won the Imirt Award for Best Analogue Game, and was the runner-up for Best Game Design in 2020 (the winner was Empire of Sin, which I was also working on at the time!).

Links:

• Cortiça on PNP Arcade
• Blog entries about Cortiça
• Cortiça on BoardGameGeek
• Button Shy’s announcement of the finalists and winner