Base price: $XX.
2 players.
Play time: 15 – 20 minutes.
BGG Link
Check it out on Kickstarter! (Will update link when Kickstarter is live.)
Logged plays: 2

Full disclosure: A preview copy of Aqua was provided by Sunrise Tornado Game Studio. Some art, gameplay, or other aspects of the game may change between this preview and the fulfillment of the Kickstarter, should it fund, as this is a preview of a currently unreleased game. 

One more thing to kick off the new year – crowdfunding previews! I took a bit of a break from them (kind … of), but now we’re back in the saddle of the new year and I’d like to get a few reviews done before I head off to OrcaCon this weekend. First up is a new card game hitting from our friends at Sunrise Tornado, Aqua!

In Aqua, players take on the role of dueling curators setting up a water-themed exhibit. One player loves things in rows, and the other naturally prefers columns in all things. As things happen, you have enough freedom to both try what you think is best and see who prefers what. You might try to surprise your opponent with a piece that may throw off their display, but all’s fair in love, war, and museum curation. Will you be able to prove your organization style is superior?

Contents

• Setup
• Gameplay
• Player Count Differences
• Strategy
• Pros, Mehs, Cons
• Overall

Setup

Not a ton of setup. Have players sit across from each other, and then give them the respective Row and Column Player Aid Cards. You can set the Visitor Cubes aside:

Once you’ve done that, shuffle the deck and play one card face-up:

If the card is odd, place a card below it face-down. If it’s even, place a card to the right of it face-down. Place the Deal each player three cards and you’re ready to start!

Gameplay

Pretty simple here, too. Each turn you play a card and then draw a card! That’s honestly most of it. If you play next to a face-down card, play the new card face-up (and vice-versa).

When you surround a face-down card with face-up cards, it’s revealed.

There are several Boat Cards; when you play one, immediately place two Visitor Cubes on it. You may move one up to three spaces away, and then your opponent may do the same.

After all cards are played, it’s time to score! You generally score points for groups of the same number and same icon in a row or column, provided the row or column’s total value is between 10 and 20. You can score bonus points for sea turtles adjacent to waves, again, provided the row or column’s total is between 10 and 20. Any time you’d score a card with a Visitor Token on it, score one additional point. Finally, regardless of row or column value, score bonus points for Lily Pads in adjacent rows or columns, based on your scoring type.

The player with more points wins!

Player Count Differences

None! Entirely two-player game.

Strategy

• Try to keep track of what you’ve played. You really need to know what you’ve played face-down. If you don’t, you risk overpopulating or underpopulating a column or row and then scoring nothing. Plus, you can’t exactly double-check what you’ve placed. You also might want to place Visitor Tokens on it!
• Also, if your opponent is building up a row or column, try adding to it to push it over the 20 threshold. You can always add more cards to mess with the value if you need to. Just make sure you actually try to score some cards for yourself! Yes, a two-player game is largely zero-sum, but it’s better to go for points than to just try to break your opponent down; you can’t always deny them points as efficiently as your opponent can gain them.
• Keep in mind that the total value of your row or column needs to be at least 10, so you’re probably not getting any last-minute saves. The largest card is an 8, so you can’t start a new row or column and expect it to score. Plus, since it’s set collection, even if you could score a new row or column with one card, you wouldn’t get anything for it.
• You score for both numbers and symbols, so you can sometimes double up pretty well. Playing a bunch of similar cards can be helpful for you, just keep in mind the limit on a row or column of 20.
• Try to guess what your opponent is placing. If you get a sense of what they’re placing, you can either pump up the value of that row or column or you can get a sense of what cards are in or out of play. Especially for things like wave cards, knowing where you can place a turtle to score even more points is super helpful.
• You do need to find some balance. Like I said, focus on scoring for yourself, not just blocking your opponent. The balance comes in when you start being able to do both! There’s a lot of ways to make headway on both if you get the right card or you get lucky on placements.
• Placing Visitor tokens can be pretty helpful, too, if you do it right. You can earn a lot of extra points! Just don’t overindex on that or your opponent might overfill that row or column to make it worthless.

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

Pros

• The art style of this game is wonderful! Ta-Te really outdid himself. He did all the paintings and they’re exceptional; just super nice! For a small number of cards, every one of them is extremely striking.
• Pretty easy to set up and play. There aren’t many cards. Just shuffle them, play two, deal three, and you’re basically ready to go!
• Good portability! It’s a very small and compact game, which is great. Even the extra six cubes aren’t too much. It’s definitely a pocket game, even if the play area can expand in weird ways.
• The game is relatively quick. You’re just playing eighteen cards and then you’re basically done. The scoring takes a bit longer, which can be a bit of a pain, but it gets easier the more you try it.
• The spatial rows vs. columns thing is very fun! I’m a big fan of that. I like how it encourages you to play tactically and thoughtfully! You can’t just play wherever and expect it to work out; you have to figure out how to boost yourself without giving your opponent too many points.

Mehs

• Scoring can be a bit of a pain given how separated everything is. There’s just a lot to do, unfortunately, between scoring the different sets and the numbers and the lily pads and the turtles and such. As I mentioned, it gets easier the more that you do.

Cons

• The player aid cards aren’t particularly helpful, since they have so much information on them, but also the rules suggest players sit clockwise from each other, but the game works best with players on opposite sides or the same side. It’s a weird quirk of the player aid cards, but I think if the rows and columns player aids just oriented their cards the same way it would work.
• The memory elements of the game add a bit of frustration, since you’re likely to forget even what you’ve played. This is the place where I struggle the most. I get that there will probably only be five cards at most that I place face-down, but I can’t always even remember which cards I placed, to say nothing of what the cards are, and that can negatively impact my ability to strategize. If you’ve got a great memory, though, you’re likely to crush this one.

Overall: 7.5 / 10

Overall, I think Aqua is a neat little game! It’s a visually striking follow-up to Promenade, even though the gameplay is significantly different, but I appreciate Ta-Te shooting for more of a wallet-size affair this time around. He once again shows his skill as both designer and artist; the game is beautiful, and you might find yourself more than once pausing play so that you can admire the cards; I did. The one thing that kind of frustrates me with the game, however, is that it’s pretty difficult to remember everything that’s face-down, since you need both to remember which face-down cards are yours and what those cards actually are. This may be helped by something as simple as turning the cards so that the first player’s face-downs are right side up and the second player’s cards are upside down, but even then, there’s a lot of memory to this game, which may not make it everyone’s cup of tea. It’s mostly vexing since what is in your row or column can matter so much, so forgetting a number or being unsure if your opponent has placed certain numbers can really potentially mess you up. Some players just have better memories. That said, the game is very short, so it’s not the worst thing in the world if one player happens to be a bit better at remembering their cards. Ideally, each player is equally matched, though. I think the game largely works well because the spatial element pits players against each other most aggressively at the intersections of their rows and columns, but since it’s a two-player game, building up your space and zeroing out your opponent’s ends up being a bit zero-sum, which is good. If you’re into that kind of thing, you have a good memory, or you’re looking for a quick and pretty game, you might be into Aqua! It’s been an interesting one.

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