Love pirates, but not the dice

Davy Jones’ Locker: The Kraken Wakes 🐙 is a co-operative pirate 🏴‍☠️ game made up of two Acts. In the first Act you will sail around trying to gather crew and equipment and upgrade your ship to prepare for the second Act, which is a boss fight against a Kraken. In a previous post we have covered the game, but I wanted to focus on some more of our thoughts and impressions. 🕵️

And I think it’s best to start with the biggest thing: Randomness. 🎲 This game uses a lot of output randomness - and I mean a lot: you will draw random cards to generate events that add some story to your adventures, and you will roll dice to see what rewards or penalties you get. You will roll dice in combat to attack, and roll dice to defend. The swinginess can be big, and whether you are lucky or not can easily spell your doom. 🙀

As we are primarily Euro-lovers, this randomness is a bit too much for us, but I can see many Ameri fans enjoying it, because on the other hand there is a huge variability: 👍 it’s fun to go on this swashbuckling adventure and see the things that happen, and experience the joys of high rolls. There are many events, exploration and open sea cards and you will only see a few in a game. There are also many market cards that you can gather for yourself. Additionally, your decisions in what actions to take on your turn, while not too complex, will matter in your success.

Another thing I wanted to touch on is the difficulty of the game. I think co-ops should be hard, so you have to do your best and keep retrying as you try to conquer the challenge. That said… I think this game is a tad too hard. 😅 On our very first Act 2 we basically died before getting to take our first turn. In our following plays we didn’t fare much better, and I am starting to wonder if the Kraken can be even beaten. 🐙 But mark my words Kraken, we are coming for you! 😄

Still, there are many good ideas in the game, and I like seeing what cards come up and anticipating what will happen. The components and overall aesthetics are also super cool. So even though this game might not be tailor-made for us, I think many others will fall in love with it.