Funniest Player Comment: “I’ve not got crabs anymore.”
8.6/10
What Is Sea Salt & Paper?
Sea Salt & Paper is a card based, set collecting game for 2-4 players with a nautical origami theme by Bruno Cathala and Théo Rivière. The game costs around £12 and is played over several rounds. The game lasts roughly thirty minutes and is designated for players aged eight and over.
What’s in the box?
- 29 Duo Cards
- 4 Mermaid Cards
- 16 Collector Cards
- 4 Multiplier Cards
- 4 End of Round Instruction Cards
- 2 ColorADD Guide Cards
- 1 Rulebook
All of the player cards feature whimsical artwork of origami seascapes by origamists Lucien Derainne and Pierre-Yves Gallard. The artwork is eye-catching and fun, it isn’t something we’ve come across in other games. We had heard that the cards weren’t of a good quality but the version we purchased has a decent and sturdy card stock with well finished printing.
The Rulebook consists of a pamphlet which is perfect as the rules are relatively simple and the designers have made it very easy to follow and understand.
A very exciting inclusion are the ColorADD Guide Cards which opens the game up to those who are colour blind and promotes the inclusivity of board games for everyone.
How to Play Sea Salt & Paper
To set up the game, shuffle the deck of cards and place it in the centre of the table. Take the top two cards and place them face up either side of the deck, these become your discard piles.
On your turn you may either take the top two cards from the draw pile and keep one, discarding the other to either discard pile or draw the top card of one of the discard piles.
Players may then choose to play a set of cards and invoke their action or move onto the next player's turn.
Before moving onto the next player’s turn if a player has reached at least seven points they may end the round in one of two ways:
They may call STOP, this ends the round immediately and all players score the points on their cards
Alternatively they may call LAST CHANCE, this gives the opposing players one last turn to play. After all the players have completed their last turn all players compare point totals. If the player who called last chance has the highest total they earn all the points on their cards plus a colour bonus, while the opposing players only score points for the colour they have the most of.
If an opposing player’s score is higher, the player who called last chance only scores for the colour they have the most of, the opposing players score all of their points.
The game ends when a player reaches a certain points total (determined by the number of players) or if a player holds all four Mermaid cards at any point during play.
Actions
Duo Cards can be played to invoke certain actions depending on the pair played:
- Crab Cards can be used to search through one of the two discard piles and add a card to the player's hand
- Boat Cards enable the player to take another turn immediately
- Fish Cards enable the player to take the top card of the draw deck
- Swimmer and Shark Cards allow the player to steal a random card from any player and add it to their hand
How to Score Points
Points are scored in four different ways:
- Duo Cards score one point for each set you have, whether in hand or played
- Mermaid Cards score one point for each card of the colour the player has the most of
- Collector Cards will score more points the more you collect
- Multiplier Cards will multiply the worth of certain cards
Our thoughts on Sea Salt & Paper
We both thoroughly enjoyed playing Sea Salt & Paper. It is a fun, easy to follow game that fits in your pocket. The artwork is unique and is definitely one of the stand out features of this game. Every card has its own life and energy, the artists have done a phenomenal job.
One of the things that stood out to us when we initially opened the game were two cards that showed symbols and colour descriptions. After looking through the game we realised these were a colour blindness aide. The symbols are an alphabet used to help those with colour blindness to differentiate between colours. In this particular game the alphabet is provided by ColorADD. We’d never seen anything like this in a game before and think it's a fantastic addition to games that rely on colour for gameplay. We’d like to see this included in more games in the future.
We enjoyed the simplicity of the gameplay, within a few minutes we all understood how to play and strategize against one another. The only minor issue we had was remembering how many points we were on and knowing when to end the round. During our game nobody used the Last Chance option as we were unsure of exactly how this function worked, after reading the rules further we are sure this feature will come up in future games.
Sea Salt & Paper is a perfect palate cleanser game and its compact design means it's ideal for taking to game nights at the pub. This game will become a regular at our table.
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