Sea Salt & Paper has players build out a great hand of cards.

But how do you know when it’s good enough?

During your turn, you assemble your hand, maybe place cards for their effect, and decide if you want to end the round. But do you think you are the one with the most points in hand? You will have to choose: stop the round immediately or give the others an extra turn to try to extend the gap? Is it worth taking the risk?

Sea Salt & Paper Game Overview

Quick Rules Summary

There is a deck of cards with 2 face-up discard piles.

On a player’s turn, they either draw a card from the top of one of the discard piles. Or draw two cards from the deck and keep one, discarding the other to either one of the discard piles.

Or a player can play 2 cards with matching ability icons face-up in front of them to use their ability.

These abilities let you draw cards, take an extra turn, steal cards from other players etc

How do you win?

At any point on your turn, when a player has 7 points they can declare ‘Stop’ or ‘Last Chance’. If stop is declared the game stops now, if last chance, the other players get one more turn.

Players then add up their points from cards in hand and from those played for their ability. Cards score either individually, by set collection or in pairs.

If the player that ended the game goes on to win, they score their total from their cards plus their colour bonus. The colour bonus is one point per card they have the most of in a single colour. The other players score their colour bonus.

If they lose, they only score their colour bonus while the other players score the points on their cards.

The first player to reach 30-40 points depending on the player count after a number of rounds wins. But, if one player collects all 4 Mermaids in a single hand, they win the whole game immediately.

Main Mechanisms

Hand management, open drafting and set collection to get that hand of cards. Then you push your luck a bit to see if you can guess if you won.

There is also a bit of memory there if you can remember what players are picking up and discarding. It will help to give you an idea of what they have in hand and how many points they might have.

Theme

I’m not sure if there is one. There is origami and sealife and while it’s all very cute I’m not sure how that connects to the game.

Setup

Shuffle the deck, flip over two cards and you’re done.

Components & Artwork

The cards are ok, pretty standard quality.

The art is really good, I’m 99% sure there are photos of actual origami scenes and they are adorable.

Ease of Teaching

The essence of the game is easy to teach. However, scoring and the abilities are a little tricky as there are a few bits to cover.

Also, the game end is quite difficult to get players to understand. “You end the game when you think you’ve won but only if you have more than 7 points” is not the simplest end to a game to teach.

Similar Games

I can’t really think of too many games like this at the moment!

Sea Salt & Paper Review

Positives

Simple and fun gameplay with a lot of variability from game to game.

I like games where your strategy will be different from the first-turn game. It all depends on the first couple of cards you have access to and what other players are taking.

It looks really pretty.

Negatives

It’s more complex than it needs to be.

Summary

A very fun quick card game you can replay over and over.

Jesta ThaRogue