Just Wondreous Creatures, last year's Kickstarterproject, successfully delivered to its supporters and immediately the Korean publisher Bad Comet starts with the next gaming hit on Kickstarter. Shallow Sea is the name of the publisher's latest title, which shines with cute meeples and illustrations. You still have the chance to grab the game until November 19th. You can find out how good the latest title Shallow Sea is in the following crowdfunding preview.
Info: We received the prototype of the game from Bad Comet for preview purposes. The final product may therefore still contain various changes.
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef on earth. It stretches along the northeast coast of Australia and consists of almost 3.000 individual reefs, making it the largest living structure visible from space. There is a lot of activity under the sea. Various creatures call the Great Barrier Reef their home. As divers, we have the chance to make the sea a habitat as diverse as the well-known coral reef.
Familiar gameplay with tactical spice
The game principle of Shallow Sea is closely based on a game that won the Game of the Year. As in Cascadia, at the beginning of our turn we choose a combination of a tile and an animal, or in this case a fish, which we then cleverly place on our game board. When making the selection, however, Shallow Sea uses the further developed version from the Cascadia successor, Sattgrün, as we have two tiles per column here. We have to decide which of the two tiles from the selected column we want to use. While the upper tiles show various corals and thus the habitat for the fish, the lower tiles are filled with the biodiversity of the coral reefs. Between them lie the various fish that are looking for a place to live.
Once we have chosen a column and taken the corresponding fish and one of the two tiles, we place them in our ocean (our personal game board). Tiles on the large tile fields and fish on the small air bubbles between the fields.
Depending on the type of tile we have chosen, we must fulfill different conditions to turn it into victory points. With coral tiles, we try to fill the colors shown on the tile with fish of the same color. If we manage to equip all sides with fish, we can turn the coral tile to its completed side and receive the victory points printed on it at the end of the game. In addition, we must place one of the fish that we used to complete the tile on the completed coral tile. These are important for various point conditions such as those of biodiversity tiles.
Biodiversity tiles indicate point conditions that can be partially or completely fulfilled to receive points. The conditions are always linked to completed coral tiles. These usually have to be next to or in the same row as the biodiversity tile. This requires skillful placement, as you build up your ocean with biodiversity tiles and coral tiles and thus take up spaces. If you're not careful, important points can quickly be lost.
shells for more control
For each completed tile, you receive a shell. These are similar to the pine cones in Cascadia. If we give up a shell, we can, for example, refill the display if there is nothing useful there. Alternatively, we can take a tile and a fish from any two columns.
What is new, however, is that we can spend two shells to move fish from bubble to bubble on our board. This brings a new tactical component into play, which can often trigger large combos. For example, if we manage to prepare three adjacent tiles so that only one fish is missing, we can complete three tiles with one move. This happens quite often in Shallow Sea and feels simply excellent.
Still until November 19 on Kickstarter
In summary, you can only take your hat off to Shallow Sea. The game uses the same game principle as Cascadia and, as a "game with a nature theme", is very close to the Game of the Year, but it expands the game principle in a meaningful way and makes the game much more tactical and thought-intensive. Nevertheless, Shallow Sea remains pleasantly simple in terms of difficulty and is just as easy to play as its role model. Including the cute characters and everything else, it is, in my opinion, much better than Cascadia. And the quality of the game was already, in the prototype, excellent, as is typical for Bad Comet! But it must also be noted that - if you own Cascadia - you don't need Shallow Sea under all circumstances. Nevertheless, we all agreed: Shallow Sea can be a nice and good change after several games of Cascadia.
If you are interested in the game, please visit the Kickstarter campaign for Shallow Sea There you will receive the game including Kickstarter goodies for the equivalent of about 36 €. With an additional expansion, the game can be purchased for about €54.
Information about Shallow Sea
| Number of players: 1 – 4 Age: from 14 years Playing time: 30 - 45 minutes Difficulty: Higher family game Classification: Tiling Game, Set Collection Author: CW Yeom Illustrations: Sophia Kang Publisher: Bad Comet Official Website: Link Link to the campaign: Kickstarter Campaign start: October 29, 2024 End of the campaign: November 19, 2024 |
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