Salton Sea: only for fans of tight eurogames

After our previous post about Salton Sea, I want to go over the tightness of the game in more detail. Because if you have the question: „Is the game good?“ or „Should I get this game?“, the answer would be a resounding yes. BUT ☝️‼️ only if you like similar tight games, that try to punish you for mistakes or bad planning, and where you generally always feel like you don’t have enough resources to do what you want.

However, the game’s interesting mechanics coupled with this tightness do make it a very satisfying experience if you do well. The multi-purpose cards that act as both money and actions are the focal point of the game, and are immensely fun. 😊 You are often wondering whether to use a high value 5$ card for its powerful boosted action, or to spend it for something that furthers your plans. And this dilemma is constant! 😱 Even when we thought after a game that next time would be easier because “we now know better”, the struggle is still there. 

I feel like the designer deliberately made decisions regarding several rules to steer the game towards this tightness and scarcity. Like if you get paid and there are no more money cards in the display or the discard to take, you just get less money. Or how you don’t get change if you overpay. Things like that. 

With 2 players this can especially feel bad if one player is more successful than the other. The punishing nature of the game is even more evident then. I think that’s why Salton Sea will act as an amazing solo game, so you can focus on your own game and your competition against the automa, without feeling guilty about how you took away that card that would have made your opponent’s plan complete. 😶

In summary I really enjoy the flow and rhythm of the game, as you extract and process resources to build up your storage and sell for different purposes, collect research cards and buy more advanced cards to become more efficient, and navigate the dense decisions of this economic euro. Definitely one of the better games from Devir’s ever growing portfolio.