Gameplay
The game is played with a deck and two discard piles. Each player has a hand of cards and an area of played cards in front of them: you score for your cards irrespective of whether they are in your hand or in front of you.
Turn Structure
1. Draw
Either:
- Draw two cards from the deck, keeping one and discarding the other to either discard pile (if either discard pile is empty, you must discard to that one)
- Draw the top card from either discard pile
2. Duo
If you have a "duo" of cards in your hand that can be played in a pair, you may play them to the table to trigger their effect:
- Pair of Crabs: Take a card of your choice from either discard pile (opponents do not see what you took)
- Pair of Boats: Take another turn
- Pair of Fish: Draw a card from the deck
- Shark + Swimmer: Steal a random card from another player's hand
Each duo is also worth 1 point, regardless of whether they are played.
3. Call
If you now have seven or more points' worth of cards (both in your hand and in front of you), you may choose to call either:
- "Stop": Round ends immediately and each player scores their points. No one scores a color bonus.
- "Last Chance": Every other player gets one more turn. This is a bet that you have the most points. The bet is scored as follows.
- If the caller has the highest (or equal highest) card score they score those points plus their color bonus. Other players score only their own color bonus.
- If another player beat their card score, the caller scores only their color bonus and all other players score their own card score.
(A player's color bonus is the number of cards they have in their most plentiful color.)
Special case: If the deck is empty at the end of a player's turn, the round ends immediately with no scoring.
End of Game
A game for 2/3/4 players ends when somebody passes 40/35/30 points. Highest score wins, tie broken by whoever went last in the last round. 4 Mermaids instantly wins the game.
List of Cards
Type (written in small writing on the bottom left of the card in the help panel)
- 9 x Crab
- 8 x Boat
- 7 x Fish
- 5 x Shark + 5 x Swimmer
- 4 x Mermaid - 1 point per card of the most plentiful color. The same colour can only be counted once.
- 6 x Shell
- 5 x Octopus - Score 0/3/6/9/12 points if you have 1/2/3/4/5 Octopuses.
- 3 x Penguin - Score 1/3/5 points if you have 1/2/3 Penguins.
- 2 x Sailor - Score 0/5 points if you have 1/2 Sailors.
- 1 x Lighthouse - 1 point per Boat.
- 1 x Shoal of Fish - 1 point per Fish.
- 1 x Penguin Colony - 2 points per Penguin.
- 1 x Captain - 3 points per Sailor.
Colours (displayed in the colour helper)
- 9 x Dark Blue
- 9 x Light Blue
- 8 x Black
- 8 x Yellow
- 6 x Green
- 4 x White
- 4 x Purple
- 4 x Gray
- 3 x Light Orange
- 3 x Pink
- 1 x Orange
Extra Salt Expansion
5 new card types:
- 2 x Jellyfish - Can form a duo with Swimmer: Other players can only draw one card from the deck on their next turn, without playing duos or calling.
- 1 x Lobster - Can form a duo with Crab: Take a card of your choice from the first 5 cards of the deck and return the rest back.
- 1 x Cast of Crabs - 1 point per Crab.
- 3 x Starfish - Can form a trio with any duo: +2 points but cancel the duo's effect.
- 1 x Seahorse - Count as 1 collector card (Octopus, Shell, Penguin or Sailor). At least 1 of the collection is needed to trigger this effect.
