AQUALIN is a nice little game to have as an opener, or when you don’t have time for more than something that plays in 15mins.
Each tile has one of six sea creatures upon it, in one of six different colours.
One player is tasked with trying to group the sea animals, while the other player is focused solely on the colours. You can move a single tile already on the board, along either it’s ‘current’ column or row, before choosing from a ‘pool’ of six avaiable tiles per turn, and placing the new one anywhere on the board.
What I really like about this game is that both players are using all the tiles. So you could place a blue crab down on your turn to make a nice row of three crabs, but you should probably make sure it isn’t going anywhere near any blue tiles, or you’re just gifting points to your opponent.
And that first part of the turn, where you can choose to move a single piece? That can be painfull when your opponent takes the centre tile from a row of five, and then blocking it’s return with whatever they place next. You’ve gone from scoring 10pts, to scoring two lots of 1pt.
It’s fun as the ever evolving board has the scores constantly in flux. And while points don’t get counted until the very end, both players can see what is where, and work out who has the advantage throughout the game.
One complaint I’ve seen a lot, is that it is easier on the eyes to play as colour. Though I recently found that, as long as the tiles are all facing the right way round, the sea creatures are almost as managable.
And it can be a little disheartening when the tiles you need don’t show up in the choice of six.
AQUALIN is an easy to teach, fun little game that starts off calm, but gets tense towards the end as tiles and spaces run out.
Always Play Blue 