Kelp Review

Kelp, is an asymmetric, two player, hidden movement game. On one side you have the octopus going about its daily business and on the other you have the hungry shark just needing to eat to survive! Let’s start with the Octopus.

The octopus’s game is one of survival. The kelp forest board is divided into a three by three grid, each containing a standing tile facing the octopus player. One tile is the octopus. The others are divided among shells, traps, and food. The main core of the octopus is to remain hidden. If they give their position away to the shark then they make it easier to be eaten! Players choose two actions in any combination: play a card, draw back up to the hand limit, or discard to hide a revealed tile. Each card has a cost of revealing tiles. This decision space is really interesting as giving the shark player information is difficult and it’s hard to stay on top of hiding and moving your tiles to keep the shark on their…fins. The action cards include learning (adding cards to the deck), swapping adjacent tiles, shuffling tiles randomly, hiding tiles, and eating. Some cards will bring in new tiles such as traps or food getting rid of the slightly useless shell tiles as you go.

The octopus’s aims are ultimately to outlast the shark or eat four things. If the shark reaches exhaustion in the hunt, the octopus wins. In order to eat, though, the tentacled player must first add the food card and tile to the game via learning and then, upon chowing down, reveal the location of both octopus and food. Each food consumed provides a really nice power boost but having to reveal your location to get it can be really dangerous.

Chomp!

Bruce (the name of the shark in Jaws and therefore the name of every shark!) is playing a bag building game and draws two dice from their bag to roll and deploy. Blue dice placed along travel lines represent currents that propel the shark beyond the allotted one space movement. allowing the shark to zip around the map. Yellow dice reveal octopus tiles, provided they are

rolled high enough to exceed the threshold of success. Red dice, which also require successful rolls, enable strikes against the octopus’s secretive tile configuration. In the event of a successful strike against the octopus itself, the players enter a battle of wits to decide the game. The octopus has three specific action cards for this circumstance, the shark possesses the counter-card. Both players select a card in secret and reveal. If there is a match, the shark counters and wins. A mismatch allows the octopus to carry out the evasive manoeuvre, continuing the game. However, after this first duel, the matching set is removed, leaving now only two matched cards and, thus, a fifty-fifty chance in the next shark strike. A third strike is a guaranteed victory for the shark adding a really interesting timer to the game.

The shark can get stronger as the game moves on but either unlocking ongoing powers but by temporarily losing dice from the game, or by purchasing one off powerful cards that also add more dice to the bag.

The shark’s weakness, however, is a track of eight dice leading to exhaustion. Used strike dice automatically land in this track (removing them from the game). Every card purchase also places one die permanently in the track. If you do the math, you see there is a limit to enhancement and attack. The shark must move with hasty precision.

Happiness comes in waves…

Kelp is a gorgeous game. The production is just fantastic and the artwork beautiful. However, more importantly it is a truly great game. Offering two very different experiences but neither one a chore to learn. If you like two player games then this definitely joins the canon very close to the top!