Thoughts on… Sandcastles

 

This game was kindly sent to us for review by YAY! Games. You can find their games for purchase here.

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When I was a kid, like many of us I’m sure, I loved building sandcastles. Building the most sprawling castle possible and seeing how long it could hold up to the ever encroaching tide! Of course, this was in happier times, when threat of attack by seagull did not exist. Not like now. Not like in Sandcastles.

Slip on your flip flops and prepare for a tile laying battle like never before. Each player will be building their own sandcastles on their own stretch of beach, or table as it’s more commonly known, and trying to close off all the open ends to complete them. Made difficult by everyone else’s insistence on stealing bits of it. But build quickly before the big wave comes and ruins all your hard work.

 

 

Great mechanism #1: the big wave card that ends the game is hidden in the bottom 10 tiles, turning finishing your castles into a ludicrously tense push your luck game. The difference between getting that one last turn can be huge! But it also means that even if you fall short there are no hard feelings, as you know you were within spitting distance of snatching that victory. It’s not an original mechanism, but it’s a really effective one.

Speaking of victory, you win based on the number of tiles in your ‘sandbank’ (geddit!?) When you complete a castle, all the tiles get flipped into a pile. At the end of the game you get one point for each tile in your sandbank, so you want to finish sandcastles as quickly as possible, right? Well no, because there are also a set of bonus point tiles chosen at random each game. These will give you points if you have built a castle of a specific shape (normally pretty difficult to do) or containing a certain number of one of the three tile types. There are also bonuses on offer for just building as big a castle as you can, and by stacking seagull tiles on top of each other* you can build the tallest tower.

*No seagulls harmed during the stacking process

 

Great mechanism #2: Once you claim a bonus tile, it isn’t safe. The next player to complete its criteria just takes it right off you. So unlike every game I have ever played, you want to either be the last player to gain any particular bonus tile, forcing you to dance around completing your castles up to the very time limit of the game, or grab the objective and attack anyone chasing you like a madman.

Ah, attacking. In addition to the sandcastle tiles themselves, there are also a set of attack tiles that can be played to steal one of the tile types from another player. Always amusing. If you’re prepared, you can defend yourself, but this isn’t some classic attack/block mechanism – oh no. This leads us on to:

 

 

Great mechanism #3: Rock/Paper/Scissors, or rather, Bucket/Seagull/Crab attack cards. This turns the all too common attack/block set up into a mini-game of it’s own right. Especially because players may continue to play attack cards until the two of them have run out. So if you want to steal a crab tile, you’ll firstly need a seagull attack, but that could be beaten by a bucket attack (just like in real life!) so you’ll probably want a crab attack to beat that bucket… but then that could be topped by a seagull! Do you make sure you have a bucket in reserve too!? But by then you have a hand full of attack cards and you’ll be forced to attack next turn! Do you want to lose your flexibility? What if the card you need is no longer available to steal next turn!? GARGH!?

Now, this system is confusing for new players and, sometimes, fairly experienced players. Remembering which tile beats what is not immediately obvious, as much as they tried to explain it on the cards. And you really need to get a handle on this, because planning out your attacks is very important, not just because of being blocked but because of

 

 

Great mechanism #4: whoever wins a fight in Sandcastles takes all the played attack cards and scores points for them at the end of the game! Making entering into combat a huge risk. While this does suck for the unfortunate player who misjudges things, it gives everyone an excuse to laugh at them. It also encourages you to really pay attention to what your opponent’s are picking up each turn. If it looks like someone is stockpiling attack cards, maybe don’t attack them! Unless you’ve also been stockpiling cards… Indeed, you can pursue attacking as a whole strategy in itself.

Sadly the attack system is a thematic dead end. Most of the game works thematically: you’re building your own castles, the biggest one wins, or the tallest tower is best. The wave comes at the end and destroys everything! And then you tell your players there are attack cards and they all sit there laughing, “oh we can kick each others castles down right?” … No, you see crabs beat buckets? It’s a minor complaint really because I like the system so much, and each of the individual reactions kind of makes sense (who doesn’t love throwing buckets at seagulls?**) but it does take everyone by surprise.

**in the game only, of course!!

 

Now lets talk about the elephant in the room: the art has all the appeal of a middle-aged fun fair attendant trying to get you to ride his broken down merry-go round. It just screams amateur Photoshop. YAY! Games is a one man operation and while that is incredibly admirable I just wish they had brought in a professional artist. Art is something that can be ignored most of the time, but I know I would probably never have picked up a game that looks like this under different circumstances. Bad art in a game shouldn’t be enough to sink it, just as dodgy graphics doesn’t make old video games any less classic. But it will raise some eyebrows around your games table. Whether that is an issue is up to you.

Fortunately, the gameplay makes up for the packaging. I very much enjoy this game! There are enough interesting mechanisms in there to keep experienced players interested, yet it’s still very simple to teach. There’s a little bit of luck but it definitely rewards playing strategically, and playing time is quick enough for it to slip in as a filler game. While the theme does get a bit lost amongst the mechanisms, it is certainly original and genuinely appealing! Sandcastles captures that joy of building as quickly as possible before the wave comes to wash everything away… Ready for another game!

 

Rating: Life’s a Beach

 

Wait! Hold on. There’s more! Sandcastles also has a one player variant!

 

 

Now it is a race against the game to build sandcastles that achieve a random set of objective tiles before the big wave appears. In many ways it’s an even better simulation of my childhood sandcastle building memories! Complete with attacks by buckets, crabs and seagulls (I frequented some rough beaches in my youth). In the solo game, you get a turn and then the game gets a chance to attack you. You can block if you’ve prepared your hand, but you can’t defend against everything and the time limit is so tight that picking up cards for defence instead of building is a very difficult choice! To give an indication of how tight this is, in my two games, the first I lost on a single tile (see above…), while the second I won with one turn left to play. That feels like very impressive balancing to me! If you like solo gaming, I can recommend this as a fun, quick-fire challenge!