Base price: $19.
1+ players.
Play time: 20 – 30 minutes.
BGG Link
Check it out on Kickstarter!
Logged plays: 1
Full disclosure: A preview copy of Reef & Ruins was provided by Weird Giraffe Games. Some art, gameplay, or other aspects of the game may change between this preview and the fulfillment of the Kickstarter, should it fund, as this is a preview of a currently unreleased game.
Man, I’m burning the midnight oil tonight. I have a bunch of stuff to get through before this weekend (I’m hosting a party to celebrate a large skeleton that we’re setting up, and Dragon Ball Daima drops), so I’ve been absolutely powering through reviews. Basically written three in the span of an evening, so I love that for me. Am I still behind? Always. But we’re working on that, too. Should have some spooky trick-taking games, some ninja games, and one cat game to look forward to over the rest of the month. And then who knows? November is a mystery. Probably more escape room games. Either way, let’s focus on the now, with Reef & Ruins!
In Reef & Ruins, you play as a team of hydras and otters. That threw me off a bit, but hey, it’s board games; let’s not get too bogged down in the details. This team is exploring and looking for treasure and magic inside of reefs and ruined ships deep underwater. The hydra can be a bit temperamental, so to assuage that, each head gets its own die to make its own choice. Sometimes they’ll agree (or have to work together), since each ship’s ruin can only be unlocked each turn by a specific die value, and enchantments can only be activated by the sum of multiple dice. That said, there’s usually one who will just dig through the reef for pearls, at least, but that’s still helpful in its own way. Opposing hydras are doing the same thing, but there’s plenty of ocean for everyone, so you probably won’t even see them. Roll dice, write numbers, and find treasure in this quick little roll-and-write. What awaits you under the water?
Contents
Player Count Differences
Oh, not a ton, here. Players are playing pretty much independently of each other, with only one player serving as the dice roller for everyone. This is one of those games where you could theoretically copy another player’s moves, but there’s at least one differentiating factor (player lucky numbers) that would disadvantage you if you did that, so there’s a smart incentive against that kind of behavior. I’m not terribly sold on these types of games at more than 10 people anyways, but I don’t have a strong player count preference, here.
Strategy
- If you’re going for the Pyramid, use the Pearls to help boost your Enchantments rather than wasting 6s on getting that 12. 6s are pretty high-value for unlocking the Pyramid ruin; if you’re rolling 6s, it’s almost always worth filling out the Pyramid first and then going after the multipliers on the Enchantment. You don’t want to get the Enchantment multiplier and then have the game end without you getting any points from the Pyramid, after all.
- More generally, I’m suspicious of using three dice for an Enchantment rather than using the spare to fill out the reef. If you use the spare for the Reef (or just use all your dice in the Reef), you can get placeable numbers, free Enchantments, and bonus points. You can get some of those things (and shells!) from Enchantments, but it feels rough to use your entire turn to just unlock one space on the Enchantment Board.
- There are sometimes “fairly obviously good” plays; do those. If you roll a 1 and a pair of the same number, for instance, unlock the 1 ruin and write the pair of numbers next to each other. That’s just a good idea. Free points. If you roll three 6s, add two of them to the Pyramid base (since every number is less than or equal to a six). Some plays are a bit more cut and dry than others, and that’s great! Makes your turn easier.
- You don’t really want to go too wide on this, though; you won’t be able to make the most of Enchantment multipliers. I think that you really want to possibly go deep on two or three ruins, and you might be able to go deep on enchanting one of them. Everything else is just harm mitigation so you don’t waste the numbers you roll, but you probably won’t get too many points from those other things.
- Use the Reef pearls to get combos. You can use them to earn numbers to either get more pearls, more points, or more Enchantments (which can also earn you dice that can be placed). This can all work out in your favor, so don’t neglect the reef.
- Don’t forget to use your Shells! Those can fill in the gaps pretty handily. Sometimes you need a number shifted a bit, and shells are there to make your life so much easier! They can save you a die for enchantments, they can get you into the ruin you prefer, they can let you get a pearl much more easily. Don’t underestimate them.
- You should try to get as many instances of your Lucky Number onto your board as possible; it’s free points. One of the best things you can do is fill the entire pyramid with your Lucky Number. Then you get a bonus 20 points for just Lucky Number placement alone. That works in all kinds of places!
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- I do like the axolotl-hydra combination we’ve got going on here. Pretty much the cutest possible hydra, which is nice. We need more cute fantasy animals, though, between Pesto and Moo Deng, we’ve got plenty of cute real animals, these days.
- The color scheme is pretty nice. I find a lot of sea-themed games very pleasant and calming because they use that nice blue and green color scheme, and I love those colors. It works well here, too.
- A fairly combo-prone roll-and-write can be fun, provided you get the combos to pop off. It’s nice to see how a Reef placement can earn you a pearl to get an enchantment to earn a 6 to place on the bottom of the pyramid ruin, for instance. I love that kind of stuff in roll-and-write games.
- I’m intrigued by the idea of alternate Reef boards, but surprised those are the only boards that can change game-to-game. It would be kind of neat if the Ruins changed, as well, but having different reefs with different rules is fun!
- Once you’ve got the hang of things, the game can move pretty quickly. As I like to point out Numbers That Feel Playtested, the game goes for exactly 18 rounds, so getting those in in under 30 minutes can be a feat if you’re learning for your first game. That said, once you’ve played, you kind of get how to play pretty quickly in the future and subsequent games move pretty fast.
- I appreciate the variety of options for how to score different things. It has a nice variety of options available between the six Ruins, the Reef, and the Enchantments. Add in the shells and I didn’t have a turn where I felt like I couldn’t do anything, which is always nice. You may want to focus on some things that are more lucrative than others, but you’re not particularly pressed to do so.
Mehs
- I think I’m starting to lose the plot on how a lot of these games fit together. I think this is set in the same universe as Wicked & Wise and Logic & Lore, I guess. I’m not particularly incensed one way or the other, I just worry sometimes that it creates a bit of brand confusion since players might be expecting a “related” game to have similar mechanics, rather than just being lore-adjacent. In case you’re confused and looking for what these games have in common, they’re just lore-adjacent. No overlapping gameplay.
- The dice-to-play process can be a bit clunky. It’s partially how the rulebook explains it, but basically, you have three dice and you need to use each one once. You can use individual dice on the Ruins sheet, but you have to spend a die to “unlock” a ruin. You can combine dice on the Enchantments sheet, but only on that sheet (and then you get shells for doing so). You can use the remaining dice on the Reef sheet, based on their value. This can be confusing for players since sometimes you can combine dice (but not always), sometimes you have to spend dice to be able to spend other dice (but not always), and other times you can just play dice normally. If players are confused, I recommend you take your turn first and walk them through it, or try a couple sample rounds.
Cons
- The rulebook can be a bit colloquial for my tastes. For someone who writes very conversationally, I can be pretty hypocritical about how I don’t think rulebooks should be conversational, and this is one of the more conversational rulebooks I’ve read. I tend to see rulebooks as technical documentation, and things can get lost in the imprecisions more inherent to conversational writing. This is all to say that I think the rulebook could be tighter; we were a bit confused on how to start playing. (For instance, I think it’s confusing that the rules refer to the A-side Reef board as an expansion, so we only have B and C. Why not just make the expansion C?) I’m similarly confused as to why the rules have you write an X, rather than writing a number of your choice, but an X is (paraphrasing the rules, but not much) whatever number scores you points, according to the rulebook.
Overall: 7 / 10
Overall, Reef & Ruins is fun! I’m pretty partial to any roll-and-write, and I think this has its charms. There are things that immediately pop out to me as fun: you can split your decisions up between the three sheets, making choices to advance along different tracks to score points. I think that’s neat, though it can lure players into falsely suspecting they should do a little bit of everything, where a more focused effort can be what’s needed to win. I also quite like roll-and-write games with spatial puzzles attached (like one of my favorites, Tag City), and both Reef sheets currently available do a nice job presenting different types of spatial puzzles for players. Plus, who wouldn’t be excited about an axolotl-hydra? They’re quite cute, so that’s definitely working in the game’s favor as well. I do wish that Reef & Ruins went a bit deeper on its combo play, though I think that depends a bit on what audience the publisher is shooting for. I’d definitely call this much lighter than, say, Motor City, but despite it seeming similar in complexity to a game like Welcome To or Cartographers, the strategy doesn’t feel like it’s quite as deep. It’s a delicate balance and definitely affected by your preferences, but I tend to tilt more towards the former games as a result. I think one thing that I’d like to see streamlined before release is the rulebook, though: currently, I found it initially challenging to understand how the dice were played due to its description. To be fair, the dice use in this game is a bit complicated, but I’m not sure the rulebook made that more clear. It’s a cute game, though, and it seems like there’s enough to it that players who are looking for quirky roll-and-writes might resonate with this one. If that’s you, you like hydras, or you’re just looking for more underwater roll-and-writes, you might enjoy Reef & Ruins! It’s cute.
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