Let’s take a first look at a new game that has made it to my collection. Sea Salt & Paper is one that was hot at Gen Con, everyone was after this little box game. Now that it’s more widely available, what is it that drove people to seek it out. And is there enough game in the little box to make it one that’s really interesting to grab off the shelf? Or will Sea Salt & Paper find itself fighting it out with other games? I need to play more to know for sure, but let’s take a first look at it.

How To Play Sea Salt & Paper

The game is pretty simple. On your turn you either take a card from the discard pile, or two from the top of the deck and discard one of those. Then you’re doing set collection to get cards that offer points the more you have. Or collecting pairs of different things, boat, crabs, fish, or people and sharks paired together, to get points and take special actions.

During each round you collect seven or more points. And when you want, you can call “stop” or “final”. If you call “stop”, everyone scores their points. If it’s “final” then everyone else gets one more turn, but you can gain bonus points if you scored the most that round. And the other players score less.

What I’m Worried About

I’m not going to say what doesn’t work, I need to play it more to know for sure. But when I play Sea Salt & Paper, there are some things I am concerned about for the longevity of the game.

Firstly that the game is just a pretty small deck of cards. Even at two players you might get through a good chunk of the deck each time. At higher player counts, that is going to be even more true. So that means two things to me. It means that you are fairly likely to see all the cards. But it also means that there is a good amount of luck in the cards that you do get. So is there enough variety in the game?

And does it do enough to separate itself from other small games. It reminds me of a hand management version of Silver or Scram by Bezier Games in a lot of ways. That’s about getting the fewest points by manipulating your “village”, here it’s get as many points as you can into your hand. So is it better than those? And is it better than other filler style games that I have, or smaller games that I have that do similar things? The field of small games that are generally fillers is pretty full, is Sea Salt & Paper good enough to stand out?

What I like About Sea Salt & Paper

Filler Games

I talked about it was a concern how it’s in a crowded field of filler and small games. But I like that about it as well. I think that it’s hard to have too many of those. One of the things that I find consistently true about these small games is that I sometimes run my course on them. Or I need to take a break from them.

But when it’s in a really small package that means that I can keep it on the shelf and rotate through playing it. If it’s in a bigger box, well, that’s much more likely to leave my shelf for good because the ratio of size of game to game play is off for the shelf space premium.

The type of game it is as well I find interesting. I like a game where I need to work on optimizing my scoring while trying to remember what you took for scoring as well. And some of that information is hidden, when you draw two cards I don’t know what they are. But when you take from a discard pile, I can start to figure that out. So it’s a challenge on the players to try and keep on eye on what tells the other players might give on how they are trying to score points.

Scoring

I also like the mermaids in the game. One of the big things about the mermaids is that you can get an instant win if you get all four. But there are only four, so that’s unlikely. But mermaids score points for you as well, they score your color that you have the most of. Though if you have multiple it’s the one that you have the most of and then the next most. But I like how you can push for that. You can try and get the most of a few different colors and even without showing that you’re scoring well you can score well.

And I like the different sets you can collect. The shark/person combo is the meanest. You steal a card from someone’s hand which can really mess them up. But for a filler game, that take that works. But the others, the crab grabbing a card from the discard pile, the fish getting the top card of the deck, or the boat getting to take an extra turn, all of those are fun. And each pair only gives  you a single point, so it’s a good balancing act of collecting those for the powers but then potentially being behind on points.

And I like that you can get a color bonus. So if you call for the final scoring you can get a color bonus. It’s kind of like how the mermaids work, but it just happens. So if you’re smart, there are times where you just collect colors to get a bit bonus that way. It’s probably not enough to get you the win, but if you know you’re not likely to score more than the person who called it, it’s a way to get more points.

Who is This For?

There are two different groups that I can think of. The first is people who really like card games. Sea Salt & Paper is a fun card game that fits well into that easy to take anywhere card games. The other is people who are looking for more filler games. If you’re used to having a game night where people split into multiple groups and sometimes one game finishes before another, Sea Salt & Paper is a good fit for something like that.

Beyond the Box Cover Sea Salt & Paper

I’m not sure I get the hype on this game. And I’m not sure that the hype for Sea Salt & Paper has fully survived the initial wave. This is pretty common for the smaller games because people like them who like them, but because it’s easy to pick-up a small game (and fairly cheap), a lot of people do, and there are a lot of okay opinions on it. That isn’t to say that it’s bad, but it’s light and that is going to work for some, but it isn’t going to work for everyone.

But, like I said, because it’s in a small box, I think that it’s going to be a fun one for me to keep around. And because of the simplicity of the game, I suspect that I’m going to be able to table it a lot. And  having a good number of games like that is a good thing for me. I’d even say that Sea Salt & Paper is a great game to take to a brewery or a bar if you want something to play. Let me know your thoughts on it.

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