Preview: Aquamarine

"The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever." Jacques Yves Cousteau. The sea is where we find ourselves today. Diving deep exploring the wildlife and shipwrecks and all the other treasures the sea has for us to explore. This is where we explore Aquamarine designed by Matthew Dunstan, Rory Muldoon and published by Postmark Games. Aquamarine is a print and play game available now on kickstarter until July 31st.

Aquamarine is the second print and play game from the design duo of Matthew Dunstan, Rory Muldoon. The first print and play game Postmark Games published was Voyages and came out in 2021. Both Voyages and Aquamarine kickstarted at $5 and includes any further updates. I backed Voyages and there have been several maps that have come out since the first map was published. Each of the new maps also included some new or different features to play with. Postmark is also great at having the community get involved in the design process with a lot of community engagement.

So Aquamarine is a game that takes place over 24 turns or one day. During the day you can take up to 3 dives to explore the ocean. While you are in the depths you will come across things like shoals of fish, jelly fish, cuddle fish, see coral, and explore shipwrecks. Exploring is as easy as rolling 2 dice. The dice and a pen are the only two things you will need to provide. It might be worth it to laminate your map and use a dry erase marker. This allows for mistakes and only printing the map once per player.

The map which is almost the entire game fits on one sheet of A4 or letter sized paper and is a grid. On the grid you will find all kinds of symbols and the aforementioned aquatic life and ship wrecks. Outside the main game grid there is the scoring table the bonus scoring table your air tanks and the time tracker.

“The sea is an underwater museum still awaiting its visitors.” – Phillip Diole

Each turn is very straightforward. One person rolls two six sided dice and then everyone uses those dice to start exploring the ocean. At the top of the game grid there are three boats and you can use one or more of the 4 squares under each to start your expeditions. Each player can choose to use the higher number or the lower number of the die rolls to start exploring. If you choose the higher number then you must mark off the difference between the two on the air tank for this dive. Each player then marks a rectangle or square shape starting at those squares under the boat or a square adjacent to any square you made last turn.

The deeper you go the more there is to explore in Aquamarine

As you get deeper into ocean it will cost you more air there are two lines across the map and when you cross the first on every turn you mark new boxes on the map below the line you will also mark off an extra air. There is a second line lower where you will mark off 2 extra air. The deeper you go the more there is to explore in Aquamarine. Speaking of air there is a limit to how long you can go. If you run out of air then your are done with this dive and will start a new dive back at the top under one of the boats. The only restriction to the second and third dives are that you may not mark off any squares adjacent to a previous dive's square.

There are 24 turns in the game 12 in the day and 12 in the night and what you discover during the day vs night can affect your scoring. There are stingrays and cuttlefish you only score if you mark off a square with a stingray during a day turn and a cuttlefish during a night turn. There are beacons in the grid too and you will want to pair them up one marked off in the day and one marked off in the night to score them.

I found Aquamarine to be another solid game from Postmark games. Its fun and can be fun for a family game night or solo when you have a break at work. The Kickstarter is only active until July 31st so stop reading this and go back it already.

Players: 1-100

Year Published: 2022

Recommended Ages: 8+

Time to Play: 20-30 minutes

A copy of Aquamarine was provided to Bert's Tabletop Games by Postmark Games for review purposes.