Currents and Critters
1
Draw or Play
Draw two cards, play one card, or move one animal. A turn is exactly one of those.
2
Build Your Reef
Every animal attaches to an Ocean, and matching families pay you more and more.
3
Score & Win
When the END GAME card surfaces everyone takes one last turn, and the biggest ecosystem takes it.
Draw or Play→
Score Points→
Win the Game
Setting up
Five minutes once, and then you are playing. Online, the game does every one of these for you.
- Take the END GAME card out and shuffle everything else.
- Deal eight cards each. Dealt no Oceans at all, you may discard your hand and draw eight fresh.
- Shuffle the END GAME card into the bottom 15 cards and put them back on the bottom, so nobody knows exactly when the game ends.
- Leave room for the draw pile, the Pool (the face-up discard everyone may draw from) and a graveyard for what the Pool sweeps away.
- Whoever visited an ocean most recently goes first, or the youngest player. Play passes clockwise.
Your turn: pick one thing
Draw 2 cards
Any mix of blind off the deck and face-up out of the Pool.
Play 1 card
Lay an Ocean, or attach an animal to one you own, then pay its cost into the Pool.
Move 1 animal
Slide one animal to a free slot on another Ocean, same side, whole turn. Oceans never move.
Paying, and the ★ abilities
- The sand dollars in the top-left corner are the price: discard that many cards from your hand. Plenty of cards are free, and any card can pay a base cost.
- Everything you pay lands face-up in the Pool, where anyone, you included next turn, can draw it. At 10 cards the Pool is swept into a face-down pile and starts fresh.
- A gold ★ is an optional bonus, and where the big turns come from. Fire it by paying with a card whose symbol matches the one you are playing (♥ ◆ ● ▲ ■); pay with anything else and the card still lands and still scores, you just skip the star.
- Stars resolve immediately and can never be banked. "Play a free animal" always means from your hand, never the deck or the Pool, and it needs an open slot to go to.
Online: leave the ★ tick-box on and the game reaches for the star whenever it can, and
stops to check with you first if you are about to waste one.
Your board
- Oceans are the foundation. Every animal hangs off one, so your first play is almost always an Ocean. They line up left to right and never move again.
- Four slots each, Up, Down, Left and Right, and a card only goes on its own side: birds and baitfish at the surface, crustaceans and coral on the floor, the big swimmers left and right. One card per slot, except Lobsters and Yellowfin Tuna, which stack with their own kind without limit.
- Reading a card: cost top-left, symbol top-right, name and species along the bottom, points and ability in the bottom box. Every animal card carries a creature at each end, and the side you attach it on decides which one you are playing.
- Ten cards, no more. Finish a turn holding more than 10 and discard down to 10, into the Pool.
The nine families
Every animal belongs to one of these nine. Each has its own colour, the one the online game lights a card up in once you switch on a strategy, and its own symbol, stamped in the bottom-right corner of every card it owns.
Oceans are the tenth thing on the table and not a family at all: 68 cards, 8 kinds, each scoring by its own rule. A Coral Reef pays more the more reefs you own, an Artificial Reef pays for every card hanging off it, a Tide Pool just counts your oceans.
Points, and the end
- Flat (+3) pays the same every time. Per type (+2 per Bird) counts everything of that kind on your board, so it grows as your reef grows. Threshold (1 = 5 · 2 = 15 · 3 = 30) pays off only once you collect the set, so commit early or leave it alone.
- The moment somebody draws the END GAME card, every player, including the one who drew it, gets one final turn. Then everyone totals their reef and the highest score wins. Extra plays still work during those last turns.
Because you cannot see it coming, a lead you already have is worth more than a
plan you have not finished.
That is the whole game.
The printed rulebook has every last detail, and the tutorial deals you a real hand and walks you through it, which is the fastest way to make it stick.
This is the printed rulebook, word for word. The same book that comes in the box, and the same
one the online game shows under Menu → Rule Book. Use the contents below to jump to any section.
Loading the rulebook…
Every plan the game knows
These are the exact strategies the online game offers you mid-match, behind the Strategy button. Read them here at your leisure, then switch one on at the table and every card that belongs to it glows in its family colour, in your hand and in the Pool, with a gold ★ on the ones that carry a Star ability.
Pick a plan
Loading strategies…
Strategies are better felt than read.
Switch one on in a live game and the board starts pointing at the cards for you. You can run several at once, and you can save plans of your own.