Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
“I wish we still had our copy of Flotsam Float.”
This was the response from one of my kids after my third and final review play of the new family-weight title from our friends at Horrible Guild, Rocking Raft. Flotsam Float—a game so nice we actually reviewed it twice—was a big hit at my house for a couple years, in part because it was so much fun to stack things on raft and play through one of the best dexterity challenge games I’ve had the chance to review here at Meeple Mountain.
Both my kids and I thought that Rocking Raft might recreate some of that fantastic Flotsam Float magic. Sadly, we were wrong.
Gemboree
Rocking Raft is a dexterity-based order fulfillment game for 2-4 players that plays in 10-20 minutes. For this review, I played Rocking Raft once at four players with my review group, then twice with my 12-year-old, the latter because our two games took about 15 minutes in total.
The raft in question is a 3×3 grid of space on a square cardboard raft, supported by a plastic base with four flat edges. It stands comfortably in the middle of any play area. In the grid, a number of small gems in four colors (red, blue, yellow, and black) are dropped to spread out treasure that must be taken from the raft and placed on small lifeboat cards, two of which were dealt to each player during setup.
On a turn, the active player uses one finger to tilt the raft downwards, forcing a number of gems to fall to the table. Gems are then placed on the lifeboat cards matching their color, with 2-4 gems going on each card to fulfill their requirements. When a boat is completely full, the card is turned over and worth victory points listed in the upper left-hand corner of the fulfilled card. Any gems that could not be placed are passed to the next player in turn order, to be used to fill their own boats. (Black gems cannot be passed because they are wild; in this way, players could find ways to hose a neighbor by NOT using the black gems and putting those back on the raft.)
If any gems remain unplaced after being passed around the table, they go back into the middle of the boat. Play continues in this way until a pirate hat card, seeded during setup, is revealed…then players finish the round so that everyone gets an equal number of turns. Count up the points on completed cards, and that’s amoré!
“More Like ‘Tilting Raft’”
The quote above, from my 12-year-old during their first play, summed up our experience with Rocking Raft nicely. The game simply is not dangerous enough.
Here’s what I mean. I was surprised how often players got almost exactly, if not exactly, what they needed to finish off a lifeboat card. In some cases, I intentionally pushed hard on the raft to force more gems into the game, in part to test how many gems could safely come out, but to also fill two cards with as many gems as I could each turn. It was rare to have more than a couple gems passed beyond the next player in turn order…and even then, that limits the ability of the next player to finish more cards, because a player only gets new lifeboat cards when it is their turn.
So, the boat is a little too easy to manipulate. The cards are very easy to fill. You’ll wish that you were dealt cards that are worth more points, too, because getting cards worth five or six points is infinitely better than the cards worth only three points. (There is no market to choose from, which is the right move from a design perspective.) The game includes an optional variant, Sinking Lifeboats, that I recommend no matter who is at the table. It doesn’t really make the game harder, but it at least threatens to sink incomplete cards faster, even if I only saw one card removed using this variant.
Horrible Guild is the publisher of one of the greatest dexterity games I have ever played, Dungeon Fighter 2E, and I was hoping for a mix of the silly challenges and the incredible challenge level with Rocking Raft. Sadly, Rocking Raft is not that game, and while I don’t think it was going for any version of something like Dungeon Fighter, there’s something missing here in terms of the magic of some of Horrible Guild’s other productions. Some of the publisher’s titles remain amongst my highest-rated games: Quicksand, Railroad Ink, Railroad Tiles, My Murder Mystery: A Dead Monkey, A Carnivore Did It!, The Great Split, Evergreen…Horrible Guild is solid.
But Rocking Raft is not in line with those other titles. Unless you are buying games for much younger children (the box says 8 and up, but I would recommend kids in the 4-6 range to maximize the enjoyment for parents here), skip Rocking Raft and consider other dexterity adventures.
Rocking Raft details
- Designer: Carlo Emanuele Lanzavecchia
- Artists: N/A
- Publishers: Horrible Guild
- Release Date: 2026
- Player count : 2 - 4
- Age range : 6+
- Time range : 15 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Set Collection, Slide/Push, Three Dimensional Movement
- BGG Geek Rating: 6.56522 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 3.5.
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