Who am I:
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I think it is important to know who wrote the review, it lets you know some of the perspectives
of the reviewer.

So, I am a 37 year old guy. I work in high tech and have for pretty much my whole life.
I have played pretty much everything out there from Ameritrash to Euro to miniatures to RPG
and more computer games than you can shake a stick at.

ps. Interestingly I have discovered people take these reviews VERY seriously.


Game Reviewed: Reef Encounter


Basic Game Description:
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I won't give a full rundown of the rules, just a little bit to get an idea of the
game mechanics.


Allright, so, this is a game that has more...complications to the rules than most
games on this site.


Each player gets a fish. This fish is a box that sits beside you. When your fish eats
tiles on the gameboard they go in the fish. At the end of the game the only points you
get are determined by the tiles you have eaten by your fish.

There are 5 different colours of tiles respresenting different species of corals.

Tiles get played onto the gameboard, tiles of the same colour touching each other form the
same coral, so, a coral is from 1 tile -> whatever the max is, probably around 20 tiles large.

There are markers beside the board representing every pairing of colours, ie, white vs yellow,
black vs yellow etc... This marker lets you know which of the two colours is dominant. Dominant
corals can attack and take over other corals.

Each player has 4 shrimp. Shrimp get placed on corals to protect that coral from attack.


During a players turn they can do as many actions as they can and then play passes to the next
player.

During a turn you can do the following:
1: Your fish can eat any coral that you own (have one of your shrimp on) that is 5 tiles or larger.

Any of the following in any order:
-place more coral tiles on the board (up to 2x per turn)
-put a shrimp on the board (1x per turn)
-move shrimp on the board around (as often as you like)
-change the dominance of colours vs. each other (ie, flip if white is stronger than black)
-some administrative items
-LOCK (1x per turn) the dominance of 1 colour vs. another (very important part of the game).
-1 other admin function

At the end of your turn you get some more tiles to put in front of yourself to play the next turn.


The game is over when either:
-someone has fed their fish 4 times
-all of the dominance tiles have been locked down
-you run out of tiles to play


Okkkaaayyyy.
So, there are actually more rules and they all play on each other, I have not described at all
the intricacies of the rules here, nor how you attack other coral etc.. etc..



Scoring: (This is important).
At the end of the game you look at the dominance chits. Every tile you have of a certain colour is
equal to: 1+ the number of times that colour is currently dominant. Hence, locking down tiles to
a certain dominance is worth a lot of points and also affects game play.



Basic way the game plays out
-----------------------------
While the rules sound complicated and convoluted, the truth is that by the 3rd time your turn
comes around you have them down solidly. Some of the interplay that occurs because of your
decisions I suspect will still come to you many games later however.

Don't get turned off by descriptions of the rules being complicated, it's really not that bad
at all.

Your goals are pretty simple:
-Make as large a coral as you can to feed to your fish.
-Try and make the dominance tiles get set to the colours of the coral you fed to your fish
-stop everyone else from doing the above. :-)

You guild areas of coral and try to protect them, playing off the desire to eat a coral or
make it bigger and eat it later knowing that a large coral is a big target. And doing this
while trying to stop the other players from doing so.

The free form of your turns is also interesting since most of the things you can do can
be done in any order which gives you a lot more options.



Game Score:
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Production Quality. (ie, how good are the bits?): 8
-Everything is cardboard, decent artwork, you get enough components that you feel
you got your moneys worth. Nice solid components.


Rules Quality. (ie. What in the heck do I do with Quatloos?): 8
-Given the options and things you can do, the rulebook was actually quite good. It laid
things out nicely and anytime I ever had a question it was right there to be read.


Game length: (ie, Oh dear god, are we done yet?)
-bit longer than most, our two games clocked in at about 3 hours each.


Player interaction: 10 (ie, could I have just been playing solitaire?)
-Constant and unrelenting. Every turn involves trying to mess with your opponents while
protecting yourself from them. Not for the faint of heart. :-) There are no fluffy bunnies
in these waters.

Luck: 3 (ie, is this just a fancy version of candyland?)
-There is some luck in the dispensing of tiles that you receive at the end of your turn.
You have the choice of 5 piles of tiles to take so it's not sheer luck, you DO have to make
a very deliberate and conscious choice as to which ones to take.


Theme:9
-Theme was great, nice to have a game that isn't yet again about building up another
city or such. Nice job of giving a unique theme.


Summary:
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But, in the end, was it fun?: 8.5

Fantastic game, it will be a staple here, I have no doubt.

It takes thought, is interesting and has enough complexities that I can see us playing this even
years from now.

Do NOT play this game when you are looking for a simple turn your brain off and chat with your
friends session. This is not that game.


Lovely unique theme with some elegant gameplay and lots of opportunity for some quite deep thought
for your games. Big congrats to the designers on a job well done.