LogFAQs > #933111928

74. Shipwreck Arcana 2017

Category: Cooperative
Genres: Clue-giving, deduction
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 20-30 minutes
Experience: 4 plays over 2 sessions (2019) with 2-3 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - Each player receives two number tiles, 1 to 7. They keep one (that must be guessed) and place another on one of four revealed cards, each of which states a fact about the remaining number (fate), such as "the number is even." The others can either guess or not. The next turn a second tile is drawn and again, one of those two tile has to be placed on a card that may give more information. Once enough numbers are placed on cards, the cards "fade," and a guess soon becomes compulsory. Right guesses advance your score while fading increases the losing clock.

Design - Shipwreck Arcana is really, really simple to play. It's a logic puzzle that occasionally puts you in a spot where you have to perform a coin flip or one-in-three shot, or a coin flip that could lead to another coin flip. While it's not a particularly game-y mechanism, like word games or social games, process of elimination is fun, and based on the clues present, you can often infer something about the cluegiver's hand ("It would be more helpful to reduce us to 1, 4, 7 than to tell us "odd numbers," so we can assume it's not 1, 4, or 7... so it's probably a 3 or 5.") Therefore, you have opportunities to feel clever, and due to the timer mechanism, you also get chances to high-five each other when you guess correctly based on luck.

There's also a painful element in the game where you'd ideally want to keep giving clues about the same fate, placing newly drawn tiles as clues. However, it can often happen that the new fate you draw cannot be played on any of the hint cards. In such cases, you actually must place your existing fate, if able. And that definitely happens, which can really throw your teammates off!

In a game this straightforward, you really look for nice components, and the art absolutely delivers. Each player gets their own set of deduction tiles, which the guessers can request be turned over to indicate which numbers they have eliminated. The tiles themselves are a beautiful black and white design; the cards with clues on them, aside from statements, have completely unnecessary but gorgeous art. In this incredibly simple abstract, component quality is fantastic and really improves the feel. I believe nominally the theme refers to fortune-telling, and it feels ominously occult thanks to the art.

Experience = Full disclosure - I've never lost a game of Shipwreck Arcana. That said, that includes plays with some expansion cards, which are more difficult, and a few of those were relatively close calls. That can put in a bias, but in my opinion, Shipwreck being relatively easy doesn't really detract from its fun. It may not necessarily be a huge challenge to win, but there's a calm satisfaction in the thinkiness of it, just like there's a calm satisfaction in the mindlessness with which you can wreck the AI at Hearts on your phone.

Future - I'd like to check out the expansions, which I could definitely see causing me to lose a game. Shipwreck Arcana feels like an amazing game to have as a warmup because of the atmospheric-looking art, which makes you want to be contemplative and quiet as you examine and think through it. Alas, my main two-player potential gaming mate isn't big on the deduction type where the guesser benefits a lot by trying to infer the cluegiver's intentions. So it's not joining my collection, but will remain on the radar for future plays when we just want to feel kinda smart together.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness