You Must Build A Boat
August 25, 2024
More About You Must Build A Boat
" * * * * ½ Gold Award - Building a boat will indeed become the most important task in your life." - Game Informer
" * * * * ½ - We will gladly build a boat again and again." - Gamezebo
BUILD A BOAT
Travel the world in your boat, from the top of the Mage Tower to the bottom of Hell
GATHER YOUR CREW
Recruit a crew to live on your boat and offer their services
FRANTIC MATCHING
Match as fast as you can to keep on running
CAPTURE MONSTERS
Turn Monsters to your cause to get bonuses and have them aid your in battle
CAST SPELLS
Use magic to aid your quests, and don’t forget to visit your onboard Arcanery to upgrade them
RANDOM DUNGEONS
With procedural dungeons and random Dungeon Modifiers, It’s never the same experience twice
BUILD YOUR BOARD
Upgrade your tiles, Quaff Potions and Pray for Modifiers to whatever fits your play style best
SPEEDRUN
How fast can you build your boat?
You must spring out of bed.
You must bargain with the lizardman.
You must heed your undead navigators.
You must slide rows or columns of tiles on a 6x8 grid.
You must match at least 3.
You must run to the right.
You must focus intently on 2 areas of the screen simultaneously.
You must match keys to unlock chests and swords to attack.
You must literally collect your thoughts and trade them for dragons.
You must not dally.
You must not be too hasty.
You must voluntarily ramp up the difficulty by taking on multiple quests at once.
You must incrementally reach your goals.
You must try again.
You must try again x5.
You must win every time, even when you don’t.
You must remain optimistic.
You must upgrade your magic staff.
You must occasionally stop playing to allow for your hand to uncramp.
You must take credit for random chain combos you made no effort to arrange.
You must trust a blue bean man to make dangerous investments with your money.
You must forget about the blue bean man.
You must mind the asp.
You must reconcile that despite the game’s title, you begin your journey in possession of what is, in no uncertain terms, already a boat.
You must go all-in on the retro aesthetic.
You must trade junk for gold with the voidorb.
You must pray for salt.
You must consume fish and tomatoes for time.
You must venture through hell.
You must disarm traps like your life depends on it.
You must make an offering at the chapel.
You must rally the Fantasy Union and the Undead Buddies to your cause.
You must weigh anchor and methodically yet joyously hop in sync with your entire crew.
You must feign interest in critiquing the gardener’s work.
You must look up at the clock and wonder how it’s so late already.
YOU MUST BUILD A BOAT!
Latest Version
1.6.1302
August 25, 2024
EightyEight Games
Role Playing
Android
174,492
$2.99
com.eightyeightgames.ymbab
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User Reviews
Jordan Charquero
1 year ago
Easily my favourite mobile game. Avoids the pitfalls of mobile gaming. No ads, no in game purchases. The game itself is addictive as all hell. Loads of charm and character. Recently updated to address some performance issues. You can tell this is a game created by people passionate about games. Couldn't recommend this highly enough.
Sean Esswein
1 year ago
Excellent design and mechanics, but you can't actually get much out of either. With so many varieties of tiles to match on a small board you get jammed up almost as soon as you start, and because of the pacing your better off swiping at random and not even bothering to look at your phone.
John S
8 months ago
Made it all the way to the Hell stage. It was fun - at first. More unique than fun honestly. I was hoping for the typical matching methods you see in Match 3 games, but nah, this has you move the entire row/column in hopes of lining up matches. So whereas with most Match 3 games you'd have matches, you have to truly dig for those matches in this one. I love a good challenge but I wanted the typical Match 3 experience, not a reinvention of the wheel.
Egan Sutherland
8 months ago
Top notch match 3. Rewards speed and reaction. Gives me that 'just one more' feeling after every run. Customization, characters, spells, upgrades, and secrets make all your runs feel important and adds a good progression system to the classic match 3 genre. Great for 3 minutes standing in line or 3 hours on a plane. Best-in-class game right here. Plus it's an indie dev that does great work, so your money is helping a person, not a corporation.
Tyler Walpole
3 years ago
YMBAB, (and its predecessor 10,000,000,) are both exactly what a mobile puzzle game should be: simple but enjoyable match 3 gameplay with some twists. Absolutely worth the modest buy in price for a game that never asks you to drop another cent into it. I've poured easily 50+ hours into both games, and that's just from killing time in waiting rooms and on lunch breaks. The perfect mobile game, in my eyes.
Paul Rail
2 years ago
Nice to see a sequel to the excellent game "10,000,000". Though it is not quite as fun as the original (I believe because there are simply too many kinds of objects to match now, matches are more tedious and you often have screens where one cannot match anything). It's also a proper game that costs a few dollars upfront but with NO greedy microtransactions or "pay-to-win" nonsense. Bravo developer(s)!
A Google user
5 years ago
Richer in content than its predecessor but without the execution to match. Certain design decisions (such as the inability to skip or manually advance cutscenes or dialogue) bog the game down, making it feel slow and laborious compared to 10000000. There are more mechanics to learn yet information is more obscured. While YMBAB has the grounds to be the superior game, it somehow feels bloated, messy, and less rewarding next to its purer progenitor.
Michael Short
3 months ago
A better game from a better era of mobile gaming. No shite in app purchases, just the game and when it's done it's done (although you can keep going through the new game plusemodes by resetting and play daily challenges.) Remembering I bought this game 10 years ago really saved my arse whilst I was stuck in hospital for surgery, so thank you!
Ethan Canny
3 years ago
A fun match-3 game that I always come back to. There's a certain charm about it that I really enjoy, and everything about it ticks the box for me. Lovely pixel artstyle, upbeat music, challenging gameplay, fun progression, and just a simple, efficient game. It's not groundbreaking, but I like that about this game. It's something I can always just sit down and enjoy, which is probably why it's one of my favourite games.
Joe Ogden
5 months ago
Enjoyed it - would recommend it but I had a few issues Pros: Fun match 3 focused on speed and reaction Quirky premise Good sense of progression Worth the price No ads or micro transactions Cons: Game is too short and I don't consider new game+ to be content When the RNG hurts, it really hurts... It feels like you just have a bad board a bit too often Some of the vendors introduced too late and you'll barely use them, if at all Abilities feel weak, random and again RNG
Rick Sanchez
2 years ago
It's quite okay time killer, but it wasn't updated since 2019. The game can really lag when using power ups on newest phones (although it doesn't affect gameplay that much) but what's worse, there is no indicator on how many meters you went through. So you can get a quest to run X meters but you have no way of knowing how many you actually did, unless you beat your previous record. Kinda shameful that game lacks feature which it's based on at the same time..
Jeff H
2 months ago
Simple and fun, a worthy sequel. Hoping the developer can take good creativity and skill and apply to a whole new experience for the next game (not complaining) Update 7/4/2024: Seven years later, I'm still coming back to this game to play it through. My only complaint, and it's a big one, is that the dev doesn't seem to be making games anymore. I'm convinced he could make mint of he made more similar games. DOITDOIT us Xennials need our old school pixelated games without ads and BS
Roxanne Clément
2 months ago
Great game, animations are tiresome on the replays; having to watch the little map animations and dudes jumping in-between every section, the final little animation at the end you can't skip if you want to replay it, as well as having to upgrade weapons by extensively mashing your screen every time - please make an option to disable this on replays! Would also be nice to access all upgrades in a single space. Also a bug (?) - the sound won't come back when switching apps?
Nephtys
1 month ago
edit: one star less for now, because there is a very annoying sound hug in the game. whenever you tab out of the app or if you get a notification and pull the phone menu down and also when you talk to the plant lady the sound cuts out and only returns after completely restarting the game. this is fun! a little stressful but always rewarding. definitely didn't regret my purchase!
anton vinogradov
2 years ago
The game itself is fine but the amount of needless waiting you need to do is just unreasonable. Why can I not just tap something and that open up the menu for it, why do I have to wait for the dude to get to it? Why are there so many things to tap on and sliders to slide? These are the weirdest design choices and really make me not ever want to replay it. Edit: I tried replying it recently. Realized the excessive tapping is why I stopped playing. 2 stars now.
A Google user
5 years ago
I bought this game when it was first releqsed and have installed it in every device I get. Never had a problem until now, with a bug many users have with the LOCKDOWN quest. I have matched twice as many as the required 56 and yet it shows uncompleted, preventing progression. The fact that you have not patched this bug after all these years is irresponsible.
A Google user
5 years ago
I love the first, and this topped it. More features, quests and other additional variables to throw into the mix. Great development/developer ethics. No IAP, no ads. Pay a few bucks for 10+ hours (minimum) of fun. Edit: I'm now 39 hours in and still haven't finished! So much content. Aside of recommending the game to others, is there an alternate way for me to donate a few more dollars to the dev in hopes of supporting a future game in the series or promotion of further content updates?
Aaron Jordan
4 years ago
I * hee-haw* love this game. I've been playing for a week and I'm on my second playthrough. I don't know if this is by bug or design. But on the last level, you don't receive good from monsters or chests anymore. I'm on my second playthrough, so I didn't have to repeat as many levels And now my gold is almost zero, and I can't beat the reaper as quickly. Another quirk of this problem, I can't get enough gold to fully upgrade my tiles and get the (secrets).
John Holsinger
6 months ago
It's unique and cute, but gets tedious quickly because upgrades are in small increments. The biggest thing preventing this game from being great (that I didn't encounter) is the ability to "bank" matches - if you match before the target of the match is encountered, then you've basically wasted a match. This differentiates this game from others, but it feels limiting.
Common Say
2 months ago
The game is riddled with strange design choices and unfair mechanics. My main issue is that half of the available tiles are effectively junk during a run. It's impossible to limit the number of junk tiles, and the functional tiles are very limited in their uses. Often times, you'll lose a run just because the game gave you a bad hand at that moment, but because of the pace of the game, it's impossible to effectively correct in time. I would write more but there's a 500 letter limit.
