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 recently received my copy of Deep Regrets by Judson Cowan, and I was am impressed with the quality and care that went into the development and production of that game. So, when I heard that Button Shy was following up with an 18-card version of the game called Shallow Regrets, I was instantly interested. On top of that, Mike Mullins designed a Shallow Regrets Solo Mode called The Fisher and the Frod, which will be covered in a separate review. My experience is based on a pre-Kickstarter prototype, so the standard caveat applies that the game and rules might change in the final versions.
Shallow Regrets: Living in a Fishbowl
Shallow Regrets pits two or three anglers against each other as they compete to catch trophy fish in six different shoals. Whoever catches the highest value of fish wins the game.
The cards get shuffled and are arranged facedown in two rows of three. Each card back features a different amount of shadow, representing the strength range that it will take to wrangle that particular fish.
During your turn, draw two cards from the shoals and choose which one you’d like to catch. As long as you have at least as many hook symbols (strength) showing on your caught fish as the strength value on the upper right corner of the card, you successfully catch that fish. The other fish that you didn’t catch get placed face down in the shoals—the sea is tumultuous and its denizens are constantly shifting around.
After the first turn, you have the ability to rotate your caught fish—exhausting them—to activate their ability before you begin the process of fishing the shoals. These grant benefits such as swapping fish with another player, peeking at facedown cards, or exhausting your opponents’ fish.
Play continues until all of the fish have been caught, or when players can’t catch any of the remaining fish. Whoever caught the most foul fish—which are essentially eldritch abominations of the deep—gets slapped with a -2 point penalty because how are you going to sell those to your local fishmonger?
Shallow Regrets: Reel Big Fish
One aspect of Shallow Regrets that I appreciate is how the game ramps up, even with only 18 cards involved. Have you ever had the odds stacked up so high that you need a strength most don’t possess?
Every angler starts with zero strength, so everyone is constrained to the shallowest shoals if they want to equip themselves to land the larger fish. It’s equivalent to pouring a bucket of chum in the water and watching the water froth as the anglers fight over these limited cards.
But the clever bit of the game is that the 0-difficulty fish aren’t completely irrelevant as the game progresses. For example, the ability of the Day Octopus allows you to swap that fish with another player’s 0-difficulty fish, which you could use to steal the Foot and its associated two strength points. This can severely hamper a player’s game, especially if that was their only source of strength thus far.
During our plays, we found ourselves typically using fish abilities the first turn that we could. By forcing players to wait until the beginning of their turn to exhaust fish for their abilities, your opponents always have a turn to try and counteract your play with their unexhausted fish. It also has an impact on what other players might catch, knowing that you could steal it or nullify its ability right away anyway. As we became more familiar with the card pool, it was clear that Shallow Regrets is deeper than it seems at first blush.
The gameplay is quick, interactive, and the scoring is quite tight—we’ve had several games decided by a single point. There have also been games decided by a wider scoring margin if a player manages to luck into a stringer of favorable fish abilities that perfectly counter an opponent. Three player games aren’t as swingy.
My main reason for not giving Shallow Regrets a full 5/5 is because it lacks one of the main mechanisms from its predecessor and namesake: Regrets! In Deep Regrets, spending time out on the water catching fish and confronting the supernatural beasts of the deep causes you to slowly slip into madness through the form of Regret cards. With only 18 cards in the game, I understand that opting for the fair/foul designation of the fish cards facilitates this game existing in the same world as the flagship. But the addition of Regrets would tie a beautiful bow on this small package.
Regardless, Shallow Regrets is A-W-E-S-O-M-E!
My wife and I have been playing Shallow Regrets constantly since receiving the prototype, beginning quite the piscatorial rivalry. She currently holds the edge, but I’m bound and determined to take the crown.
Which goes to show that if you give a man a fish, he can eat for a day. But if you give a man a copy of Shallow Regrets, he can play until the cards wear out.
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