Captain Flip: the game is deeper than it seems

What is a board game? Captain Flip?

In Captain Flip , you are at the head of a pirate ship… without a pirate! It’s up to you to form the best crew to collect as many treasures as possible and be the richest at the end of the game. Choose your characters carefully and place them wisely, to be more effective than the others.

Accessible from 8 years old, for 2 to 5 players and games lasting around twenty minutes, here is a very family-friendly game, but which also appeals to a more knowledgeable audience, since it is deeper than we think.

First title from the brand new PlayPunk publisher, Captain Flip is a game by Remo Conzadori and Paolo Mori, illustrated by Jonathan Aucomte. You can find it for €24.95 at Philibert.

How do you play Captain Flip?

Everyone has their own personal board, completely empty at the start of the game. They are all identical, chosen from the four different ones offered in the box, and represent a small scene: on board a boat, on a desert island, fighting a kraken, or adrift on a raft. On each board are represented five columns of varying height, divided into boxes.

A turn of the game is extremely simple, since it consists of drawing a tile at random from a bag, and placing it on its board, in the lowest empty space of one of the columns. Each tile represents a character, a future member of your crew, with an effect, either immediate or end-of-game.

Thus, the gunboat earns 5 coins when it is played, but causes you to lose the game if you have three or more. The lookout earns 4 at the end of the game if there is no other character above him. The parrot causes you to lose a piece, but allows you to immediately draw and play another tile. Etc. There are nine different characters in total.

It may happen that the tile drawn does not suit you. You have the possibility of turning it over (hence the “flip” of the game title)… but are then forced to play the other side. You can’t decide to go back.

Some columns provide bonuses when they are completed, and the game ends when someone has completed four of their columns. We add the points scored to those at the end of the game, and the highest score wins.

Why is it good?

Captain Flipleft under the best care: a co-author with undeniable talent, an editor certainly very young, but trained by the team behind the multi-acclaimed 7 Wonders . So much so that the first part feels a bit like a cold shower. ” All that for this ? But it’s a children’s game! “.

Then we do a second one, to check, because it’s still astonishing. Then another, yet another… without realizing it, we’ve played around fifteen games in a few days, and we always want to play again.

So certainly, with a publisher claiming to be punk, we expected a game that was a little more off the beaten track, less consensual, taking more risks. It prevents that Captain Flipis extremely effective. If during the first games you place your tiles a little randomly, you quickly learn to optimize, to anticipate, to leave this or that location empty to place a particular character there later. And even if a game only lasts around twenty minutes, we try to put a strategy in place.

The possibility of turning over your tiles provides a particularly pleasant little adrenaline shot. We always hope for something better, we assess the risk of something worse. Chance is obviously present, but without making the game frustrating.

By playing it, whether on the table or online on Board Game Arena, and even if the box is already full, we always want more: more different boards, more characters, more effects. But these slightly more restricted possibilities ultimately have the advantage of making it accessible to a very wide audience. No need to learn the power of dozens of characters to play. After a few rounds of the table, everyone understands how it works, and a game aid summarizes the essential effects.

Even if the game is not as innovative as one might expect, we must admit that it is really effective. It is particularly aimed at a family audience, while offering enough interest and challenge to more experienced players. It’s simple, quick, beautiful and smart. And once the game is over, you simply want to do it again. A real success for a first game from this publisher, the next of which we are now impatiently awaiting.

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