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Just have the best reef after 17 actions!
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By flipping coral, you get VP, and also start attracting Sealife!
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Tons of decisions on how to flip and rotate tiles!
Our Plays
1x 2P
1x 1P
Need to learn how to play? Or want more reasoning for our points? Our review video’s got you!
Gameplay Pros — Interplay of Coral, Sealife, Fish is a great puzzle
Coral is flat points and is the base, sealife is scaling points and can ask for coral OR completed fish
Fish are the fuel for both tiles, and are only thing that are move-able and can be spent
Have to always think about what sea life you can fulfill, then see where fish SHOULD end up to fulfill those
When complete a coral, have to decide which fish around it goes on top
Sea life are easy to understand but still tricky to do
Only limited of each type (2 in 1-2P), so can’t just keep spamming the same
Only have 17 turns with diminishing space on player board
Every single coral is different
The most common one, the 7 pointer, can sometimes ask for 2 more colors
Incentivizes you to expand your horizons even when pursuing 1 color (explained in the video review, hard to do over text)
A nice push-pull between going for Sealife that ask for matching coral or different coral
Sealife that asks for fish adds brain twist by asking you to “double-dip” with using same tiles for coral AND fish on top for completion
Component Pros
All tiles feel fantastic, one of best we’ve felt
2 Plastic trays for all of the sea life tiles allows you to alphabetize
3 baggies for coral/fish/sealife are great to touch, appropriately sized, and have cute designs
Fish are different shapes and printed on both sides
Nice art on scoring cards
Nice wooden seashells that have space on board
Scoring pad even divides the scoring on your board by rows which reduces confusion
Rulebook is exceptional, with precise writing, explaining all scoring cards
Other designers please use this as a reference!
Gameplay Pros — Seashell Usage cleverly done
Clearing the take-ables mitigates RNG really well if you are carefully counting colors
Cannot complain about center flips ever
“Breaking the grabbing” of taking a fish from any column really explodes the possibility of a turn without adding much rules overhead
Spending 2 seashells to move fish makes game far less punishing and makes turns feel more dynamic
Nice feels good of spending final sea-shells to move fish near coral for end VP
This removes need of having seashells be worth VP come end game
Gameplay Pros — Incredible Combo Feeling
Spend seashells to flip tiles, which gives you more seashells
When flip coral, sometimes that flips sealife, so flipped 2 tiles for the cost of 1 seashell
Encouraged to continually spend seashells to keep the pace even, as you’ll cap at 5
Gameplay Pros — Elegant Turn Structure meets great decisionmaking
Idea of grabbing 1 tile and 1 fish is actually 10 possible grabs (and that’s w/o seashell spend!)
Placing a tile is in any direction, fish can go anywhere next to your tiles
Just ramps up so that on turn 3 you can already be freaking out about possible fish placement
Gameplay Pros — Runs REALLY true to time
30-45 minutes, at least with 1-2 players
ALWAYS 17 actions no matter what
Doesn’t induce a lot of AP because every time you flip a tile, it’s out of the game
Flipping corals removes fish from the game
Combined 2 actions into 1, with a tile and fish grab, to keep pace brisk
End game scoring is easy, setup/takedown is easy with the 2 trays
Replayability Pros
14 objectives split into 2 decks that can change feel if you’re serious about playing for points
e.g. get rewarded for sea life in columns
e.g. get rewarded for sets of 3 matching fish
22 different sea life tiles, pick 10
Family mode for easier end game scoring (we recommend as good first play)
Achievements in rulebook
Solo Mode — NO AUTOMA
Single card to manage, just place fish on it as seashells when you run out of seashells, anything past 2 uses is some negative VP
Great way to replace another player taking stuff from middle
Just much more agency and way less bookkeeping
Coral Reef Theme meets Gameplay Well
Especially standout because game is short, and most Euros have a pasted on theme
Build coral -> Fish find home in them -> Coral patterns or fish patterns attract sea life
More coral is around fish, better fish feel (more VP)
Get more points for having a diverse ecosystem
Component Cons — Very minimal complaints
Player aids explaining seashell costs would have been appreciated
On first play easy to mix up 1 vs. 2 cost for Seashells
Highly recommend you bring at least 4 plastic bags to store all the fish
At beginning of game, need to divide them, so storing them all together adds more friction
Player Count Cons — Potential Downtime
3-4 player count will have downtime
Structure of the game is to chain together combos, so must wait for more people to do that
Harder to plan around the middle because more people taking from it before your turn, greater chance it gets cleared
Mechanically game should be fine, counterplay still exists
Recommender Score - 10/10 Masterpiece!
If you like shorter-ish tile laying euros with a high skill ceiling, definitely try this, or just buy it. The brain-burny action usually happens right away, the game will NEVER overstay its welcome, and the board is so easy to track despite all of the choices. It’s just extremely little friction to get into the juice of it all.
Now it is quite low-conflict, like you can never go send a pirate attack squad to someone else’s coral reef.. but that also just wouldn’t make any sense given what this game is trying to do. Buuuut you can have a lot of hate grab interaction, especially 1v1, with the high skill ceiling.
Like looking at what colors of fish people want, its easy to see from across the table, you can look for a orange requirement and NO fish on it, and we found that people will actively voice that THEY NEED FINDING NEMO NOW!!
Or someone needs some sea life orientations really badly, then you just take it and have it chill there for partial VP.
Or someone else wants certain colors… so you just clear it ahahaha, you might be spending a bit with the seashell spend, but you’re hurting the opponent more!
Anyways, Shallow Sea has really blown us away, like it basically doesn’t do anything badly, gets to the puzzling ASAP to get those fishes in the right area, argh why did I put that fish there when its clogging up that coral from being completed! Agggh sometimes you just can’t do everything by the time those 17 tiles are placed, and that’s even where the partial completion of coral comes in! No wasted actions. It’s not shallow at all, it’s quite a deep game for 30 minutes!
The seashell design of combo-ing multiple things on a turn really reminded us of Wondrous Creatures, another game by the same designer and team that was a much more complex worker placement with lots of cards in hand to play. And that was more complex, a lot longer… but needed a lot more setup and takedown.
Another thing that is a bit similar in time length is the evergreen Splendor, which is certainly MUCH simpler and shorter to play, and leans way more to engine building. Shallow Sea is more identifying the right opening for a fish, trying to mitigate the RNG well in the middle, and panicking about what sea life needs to be flipped before the game ends soon.
This will be one of the best produced games overall we cover this year. And you get to finish with a beautiful reef in front of ya, how wholesome is that.
