The Shipwreck Arcana First Impressions

The Shipwreck Arcana is a co-op deduction game where you’re trying to guess the hidden number belonging to each other player.

Also, can you use the fates to help your teammates guess your number?

Trapped in a drowned world, you and your allies are doomed — or are you? Using a mystical deck and a healthy dose of logic, you can predict each others’ fates and escape unscathed.

The Shipwreck Arcana Review

My first impressions of The Shipwreck Arcana including a brief overview of gameplay followed by my final summary.

Summary

Co-op deduction games are generally pretty bad mostly due to the alpha gamer problem. In games like Mysterium, even though the ghost can’t say anything there is usually one ‘louder than the other’ investigator.

There is also one player who might be genuinely better/more intelligent than everyone else and maybe it’s because of that player the team wins. But, it comes at the expense of the fun everyone else is allowed to have.

No one wants to feel stupid, ignored, or treated like an observer in a game they’re supposed to be playing.

Here, that silent player rotates and yes in a 3 player game it means they affect two-thirds of the game but that’s a third better than most 🙂 It also means if they are intelligent they can use the tools available to them to give excellent clues, helping the team with their skill while allowing them to play their own game.

The way the clue cards work is great. They’re good enough, but never TOO good depending on your tile draw obviously. Any that are good get used more and fade quicker and then they’re gone…

This is a very pretty and fairly unique game with plenty of replayability.

I predict your fate is, you’ll play this game and enjoy it  🙂

Jesta ThaRogue