Flippers

Today I’m going to be talking about Flippers, a really interesting and kind of unusual tile-laying, almost auto-battler game about using a group of penguins to fire the food. The object of the game is quite simple. Essentially, what you’re trying to do is grow your stash of food and thereby get the most points to win the game. To do so, you need to use tile cards that, at the end of every turn, have an effect on all of the other tile cards, creating a chain reaction that affects everything in the game, whether you want it to or not.

Start the game by picking a colour and taking the nine matching cards. There’s no advantage, everyone gets exactly the same cards to start, and the different colours and different types of penguins just offer a little bit of flavour. Points are tracked by using little wooden fish, with a blue one being worth one and a yellow one being worth two. These are nice and cute and, as far as tokens go, add a nice little element to the game.

You place a food tile down on the table and this is going to give you a load of points at the end of the game based on where tiles are. These are double-sided, and that is key, as during the game there is a reasonable chance this may get flipped over and therefore may change where the arrows are pointing.

Start the game by setting up the food card and then each player placing your plus-one bonus fish card alongside that starting card. This is a key card, as ideally you want to keep this next to the food card at the end of the game, as it’s going to give you bonus points. Whether that happens or not is difficult to say at the best of times.

On your turn, you have a hand of three cards and you need to choose one and then place the card down on the grid, adjoining another card already on the table. Once you’ve done this and your turn ends, the power on that card is activated, which may do things such as move other cards, rotate cards, flip cards or swap cards. But the key bit is that after you’ve done this, all other cards that you have laid before also activate in the order of your choosing, creating a bit of a chain reaction that can cause chaos around the board.

This continues until all players have played all of their explorer cards and everything has moved around the board. You then work out the final score based on the amount of points you’ve got, with the person with the most points winning.

I played this game with two people and I also played it with four, and both work really well. The game is quick and actually it’s really engaging because you quickly realise that it’s not just about planning your moves but also trying to work out how you can let your opponents’ placements work for you. This is really key to doing well in the game. A really good example is that in one of the games I played I was utterly convinced I was going to win, and then, due to some weird movement of other cards, a chain reaction happened at the last moment, the food card got flipped, and it completely inverted all of the points that were being focused on my explorers and instead were focused on my opponent’s explorers. I was totally blindsided by it, but the key thing is that I didn’t find it unfair.

The kids really like this. The kids like the auto-battler “things doing their own thing” type mechanic, and as such this was really popular with both Jack (10) and Toby (7). I definitely reckon you can play with younger kids too, as everything is done with icons and you can explain exactly what each icon does pretty simply.

Artistically, the game is fine. I really like the wooden fish and I like the concept. I didn’t find a lot of the artwork that inspiring, but it’s fine for what it is, and it’s a minor gripe for a game I actually really liked.

We really liked Flippers and it’s definitely something that is a little bit different in terms of the kind of small-box tile-laying games that we normally see. It works well, it works at all player counts, and this is one that I would definitely recommend. Currently, it’s not the most widespread game available in the UK, but you can buy it from Zatu.

Fun little game and a definite positive recommendation from me.


Disclaimer: We received a prototype copy of Flippers from Molinarius Games. via the UK Board Game Review Circle for review purposes. This has not affected the content of this review.