Hey That’s My Fish Review

Marc: Good evening Matt.

Matt: Er… good …evening Marc? What’s with the suit? Are those coat tails you have on?

Marc: Oh, I always dress up for an elaborate introduction.

Matt: Is that right?

Marc: Your dinner, smells, delicious… haddock?

Matt: Yes…? Wait, did you bring that fork with you?

Marc: Mmm, mind if I help?

Like a coiled spring his arm shoots out, fork crashing through batter and into the flaky fish beneath.

Matt: Hey! That’s my fish!

This is the icy tundra of Antarctica where the hunt for food forces you to be as harsh and unforgiving as the environment itself. Supplies of fish are running short as your competing penguin families hoover up anything with gills within a 4 hex radius. Yes of course Antarctica is made up of hexes! Just like space and every World War 2 battlefield.

Across this grid of hex tiles your penguins shall be waltzing through a dance to the death, grabbing fish as they go. You see, the fury of a penguin feasting on fish is a terrifying site to behold, so powerful is it that the very segment of ice it was standing on will melt away… into the hands of the controlling player. Then that penguin will move, leaping towards the next hex and the next pile of fish. Then it’s on to the next player, and the next, until all the ice has disappeared and the penguins are trapped upon their own individual chunks. A sobering lesson on greed and over fishing, but at least Hey That’s My Fish is insanely simple to play.

 

In your first game you’ll be presented with an untouched wilderness (of fish tiles) and you’ll be told that when you move you’ll be able to move as far as you like in one direction. As far as I like!? That’s crazy! You’ll think. Then within 2 rounds you’ll realise 1) just how quickly the board disappears and 2) how utterly brutal this game can be!

You see, penguins being corporeal beings mean they block each other. You also can’t move over gaps in the ice flow. Yes I know penguins can swim, shhh! These properties allow you to use your penguins as living weapons to block, coral and trap your opponents off on lovely (tiny) islands on their own, or take the opportunity to carve off your own slice of fishy heaven all to yourself. When I play this I will quite literally hurl my lovely plastic penguins at my opponents’, cutting down their options and getting right up in their beak, caaawing at the top of my lungs. I only occasionally get complaints from the neighbours.

 

Speaking of complaints I do have some minor things worth mentioning. For one setup is pretty fiddly: you need to layout all the tiles in a specific grid shape while randomising the fish, and the tiles are too small and end up too close together to easily flip over if you do this face down as suggested by the rules. Just do it face up and you’ll be fine. The theme too is a bit weird if I’m honest (although I love the penguin miniatures). It is a strange juxtaposition, the kiddy friendly cartoon penguins, with what is without doubt a deeply strategic abstract game.

See, while every turn of Hey That’s My Fish is ludicrously simple, every move you make is worth careful consideration. Blindly running for the high value tiles is not necessarily the most effective way to win as the game is truly about controlling and segmenting the board in your favour. Furthermore, because the movement rules are so simple and everything is open, you can think multiple turns ahead, as if this were Chess. Except unlike chess the variable setup ensures interesting decisions right from the opening. This really shows when you get players of different experience levels together.

There is something here I still can’t decide on. In a close fought game, the secret scoring makes the final reveal of points exciting, but it is quite possible for a good (or opportunistic) player to cut off such a large proportion of the region so that there is no way for them to lose, rendering the last half/third of the game meaningless. This is symptomatic of a wider issue with the game that as it comes to a conclusion the options available to players diminish to where the end few turns feel a little like book keeping. The game winds down where I wish it ended with a bang. And yet the main body of the game is so tight and so interesting. The fact is, the game peaks in the mid game.

But what a peak! Amazingly, a game featuring a penguin stealing a flipper full of fish as its cover art and possibly the simplest ruleset I’ve seen, offers a fantastically challenging and, more importantly, fun game to experience. When you trap an opponent’s penguin out on a lonely corner of the board you’ll feel like a genius, while they’ll be crying with frustration. There is that dawning realisation that you have simply been out played, and that is a wonderful thing to have in a game. For that reason I feel it completely makes up for the slightly weak end phase. Plus, it never takes more than half an hour to play! The game has its oddities, but for me the rest of the game more than makes up for it. It is definitely worth trying out.

 

Rating: Catch of the day!

 

Hey That’s My Fish was kindly provided to us for review by Esdevium Games. It’s available from your local board game store for an RRP of £9.99.