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Made by Next Move Games - the same people who make Azul - Reef is a clever tile placement game that feels simple on paper but quickly gets trickier than you’d expect. Much like the much-loved Azul.
However, while Azul is played in two dimensions, Reef is played in three, as you place and stack your lovely, weighty, colourful tiles to build a coral reef to get maximum points.
And in fact, beyond the substantially weighty tile pieces and nice, crisp design - the two games don’t really have that much in common.
How it works
Essentially each player takes it in turn to either draw or play a card. The cards - which can be drawn blind or from a choice of three face-up options - come with the promises of resources (two colourful reef tiles) and the potential to score points if the patterns on your board match the patterns on the card.
If you draw a card, you take it in your hand, ready to play it when the time is right. When you play a card, you acquire and place your two pieces of coral, then collect any points for matches between the pattern the card demands and the way the coral is set out on the map. Sometimes you might play for both points and resources - other times just for one or the other.
Building up
In Reef you’re encouraged to stack and build towers of up to four pieces of coral - and as you build towers, you can shift between colours - meaning that each decision you make can later be switched as you strive to make patterns to score points.
Essentially the scoring rewards either big towers of stuff, or blocks of similar tiles all together.
This allows for your tactics to adapt and flow as the game progresses and you adapt to the cards that are drawn - and you can win big points for a square of yellow coral pieces, then start covering them up to achieve a nice diagonal of reds.
It also allows for different players to build their score with different tactics. One player may opt for building high and scoring with simple patterns atop a nice big stack of tiles, while another may build low and score for more complex to achieve patterns closer to ground (or should that be sea-bed?) level.
Steady scoring
The gradual way you build your reef means the initial few turns become about gathering cards (to a maximum of four cards per hand) and often playing them just to start building your reef, rather than gather points. But, over time, as your reef becomes more stacked the points can amass quite quickly.
So the first few rounds you may find yourself barely scoring at all, while, as the game reaches its climax, you can find yourself raking in nice stacks of points to reward your more ambitious designs.
The game crashes to a halt when the first stock of one piece of coral runs out - which can be deeply frustrating. But smart players can stockpile cards in their hands and patterns on their map and then score the cards remaining in their hand. This can make for a slightly drawn-out resolution, but rewards those players able to think longer-term and meet several demands at once - and also means there’s little motivation for the winning player to try and bring the game to a premature end, as they never truly know what final scores their opponent may have up their sleeve.
More of a mechanism than a theme
While the game is supposedly about building a coral reef, in truth, the theme is barely there, and feels like a bit of an afterthought to a well thought about mechanic and game. You could just as easily be stacking counters, building buildings or planting a garden.
So Reef never really takes you away into an escapist world of tropical beaches and colourful fish - and doesn’t try to tell you anything about the importance of reefs to their ecosystems.
Nope, this game is all about the pleasing puzzle of building up your board, balancing pooling resources with taking points and being open to adapting, scrapping and changing tact as the game moves along.
And that thinness of theme would be an issue were the gameplay not so compelling and the physical stacking of quality pieces not so satisfying. In fact, you barely notice how little there is ‘behind’ the game - and get lost in the game itself. Which, in an odd way, feels like a win in itself.
