Game overview

👥 2 players
⌛ 15 minutes 
🧠 10 years and up

Aqua is an 18 card game where 2 players are competing curators trying to build the best exhibition of water-themed art. Players score points through set collections (sets of  icons/numbers, sets of sea turtles and water), consecutive lily pads, and visitor cubes.

We went into Aqua expecting a zen (#CozyGame) experience, but there are a few rules that make Aqua feel less tranquil waters and more stormy seas:

• Firstly, players take turns playing art cards into a shared exhibit area where one player is scoring rows, and the other columns.

• Secondly, players have to play their card facedown when placing it next to a card that is face up. Face down cards are only revealed if they get surrounded by other cards on all sides, or at the end of the game. Cards played next to face down cards are played face up.

• Thirdly, all cards have a value between 1 and 8. Rows/columns are only scored at the end of the game if the total card value in that row/column is between 10 and 20. 

This means you need to balance playing cards that will (hopefully) give you points with screwing over your opponent (by making their rows/columns go bust).

…there are a few rules that make Aqua feel less tranquil waters and more stormy seas

Whilst we like tension/player interaction in our games, we would have preferred a more relaxing experience to go with the calm aesthetic of the cards. We also appreciate how Aqua has more depth than we expected, but having a strategy was challenging and we found that we scored more often by chance than through intentional (strategic) decisions. This is probably due to the limited number of cards you play per game (8 each), combined with the inherent randomness of what 9 cards you draw. 

Aqua is a great travel option – the box could sneak into any bag or even a pocket. Unfortunately, we found that the game didn’t quite fit onto a standard 2 person table at our local coffee shop. Being able to take it to the pub/coffee shop is one of the main reasons we’d be interested in a microgame; if it doesn’t fit on a coffee table easily, it’s unlikely we’ll play it often. Another consideration is that the game box doesn’t have capacity for sleeved cards, so if that’s something you would prefer to do (I would for a game regularly going to the pub/coffee shop), you’d need to find an alternative way to store the cards.

What we like:

• Gorgeous artwork and good quality cards.
• Straightforward to play (the rules and examples score sheet are good).
• Surprising depth to the game, especially as you get more familiar with the cards/your opponent.

What we don’t like:

• The card sprawl means that it’s not as easy play out and about (which is what we’d want this game for).
• Hard to strategise because of the short game time / fewer player turns / randomness of the card draw (this may be a common issue in these small 18-card games?).

Final thoughts: 

We haven’t had that much experience with 18-card games, and we’re really impressed with how much depth Aqua has squeezed into these 18 cards (and 6 cubes). And the art is so lovely. However, the game wasn’t what we were looking for with the calm art style, and it was trickier to play out and about than expected (unless we took up a bigger table). We can see how other people, especially competitive style players, might enjoy the juxtaposition of relaxing art with aggressive gameplay. The limited strategic decisions you can make could be seen as either frustrating or a fun challenge (we sided more with the former).

This has definitely made us want to try out more microcard games – please let us know if you have any suggestions! (especially ones that have a small table footprint!)

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This game was kindly loaned by Sunrise Tornado via the UK Board Game Review Circle. All opinions are ours and our reviews are always honest.