Co-op tilelaying?

A good co-operative tile-laying game is like a holy grail combination to me, as I love both co-ops and tile-laying, but such games have missed the mark so far.
⚓ Beacon Patrol is another contender in this category, so let’s see how this one is!
You and up to 3 friends sail around in your boats, building an archipelago with tiles, trying to score the most points.

I’ll start with the “bad” news: 😶 this a beat your own high score game, so there is no real losing condition. However so far it seems that scoring high isn’t easy, so you could just say you lose under a certain threshold, which to me is more palatable. The game itself has some clever twists and ideas though!

👉 Depending on player count, players get some movement tokens and tiles. On your turn you can place down tiles orthogonally adjacent to your ship’s location, moving you onto it automatically. If you have to get somewhere, you can either discard tiles or flip your movement tokens to move your ship. ⛵

👉 When you place tiles, naturally the sides have to match: sea to sea, land to land. However as you have to move onto your new tile, you can never put a land side next to another land if you had to move through it - you are sitting in a boat after all, not a car. 🧐 This means, to fully explore an island you have to add tiles to it from multiple sides. Also, any tiles you cannot place by the end of your turn will be discarded, which is not something you’d want to do, as you play until the tiles run out and there is no reshuffling of the discard pile. To combat draw randomness, you can swap a tile with a player once per turn.

🏆 At the end you will only score tiles that are surrounded from all 4 sides. Basic tiles are worth 1 point, but buoys are worth 2 and lighthouses are worth 3. Ideally you prioritize completing those. There are also 2 modules you can (and should) include: One adds Windmills that score for open sea tiles next to it, and the other adds Piers that score for every house on its island.

💬 All in all this is a chill and enjoyable game. The restrictions make it quite challenging to score well and the three-tone art gives it a really tranquil look.☺️