July 19, 2007
If Wishes Were Fishes
SarrettAdams is proud to announce the release of our newest game, If Wishes Were Fishes, a family game for 2-5 players (best with 3-4).
The central idea of this game-- a card drafting game in which cards provided resources of some kind if you kept them, but did something else if you discarded them-- percolated in my head for months, refusing to gel into a game. Then one morning I woke up and thought of the Grimm fairy tale about the fisherman who catches an enchanted fish who grants him wishes in exchange for setting him free, and it seemed like the perfect theme for that card mechanism. From there the game unfolded almost on its own. Earlier versions of the marketplace worked differently: instead of buyers that moved around, the values of fish exchanged places on a fixed scale. This wasn't as fluid as we wanted, so we scrapped it and devised the roving buyer system which works much better.
In If Wishes Were Fishes, players take turns fishing from an ocean of four fish, either keeping the fish in one of his fishing boats for sale later at market, or throwing it back into the ocean and using the wish granted by that fish. The deeper in the ocean the player goes, the more worms he must use to catch a fish. Wishes allow players to get extra boats, move buyers to different market stalls to change fish values, sell fish in various ways, turn worms into money, and so forth. When markets reach a certain number of fish they close and award a bonus to the fisherman who sold the most fish there. Fish can also spoil, and if the garbage heap overflows the game ends and a penalty is assessed. The player with the most money after four markets close (or the garbage overflows) is the winner.
We sold the game to the publisher in April of 2005, so we've been looking forward to seeing it in print for quite some time. The box art may make it look like a kid's game, but it's actually a fairly light and mostly tactical game aimed at the family market rather than either children or hard-core gamers. Kids will love the awesome purple squidgy worms Rio Grande chose instead of the dull plastic chips we used in the prototype, though! Games should clock in at 30-45 minutes once players know the rules. Most exciting for us, this is the first SarrettAdams game that is being sold at game stores nationwide. We hope you buy and enjoy it!
Posted by Peter at July 19, 2007 10:39 AMCongratulations. I've heard a lot of buzz about this game.
Posted by: Steve on July 19, 2007 2:12 PMi hope it's a hit. i'm sorry to say that if i didn't know the authors and i saw that art on a game i would never pick it up. and i'm not saying that because it looks like a kid's game.
Posted by: dana on July 19, 2007 5:24 PMI picked this up and brought it to a game night recently. Perhaps I was too quick in my review of the rules from the time I played the prototype ages ago (2 BB (Before (my son) Benjamin). We had 3 players. The mechanisms worked, but it seemed much drier than I recall. There seemed little suspense or driving need to spend too many worms (which are very cool). Only 2 fish ever ended up on the garbage pile and wishes were used to get them off. I'll have to reread the rules and see if there is something I missed.
Posted by: David S. on July 25, 2007 7:12 AMFor a variety of reasons, I try not to respond to qualitative comments on my own games.
The garbage heap is not usually a big factor in games. In some games, one or two markets will become very valuable and draw a lot of action, causing overflow into the garbage. Under those conditions, the garbage can come into play. If that doesn't happen, garbage probably won't be an issue.
I suspect that the play experience and tension level will differ depending on a group's style. But the game is also highly tactical, and there can certainly be stretches where the best move is unambiguous.
Ultimately, it's aimed less at game groups than at families, so it just may not be your cup of tea. But thanks for buying it!
Posted by: Peter on July 25, 2007 12:00 PM