Sea Salt and Paper is a quaint little card game that feels a lot like those messy homemade card games you might've come up with as a kid.
While I'm charmed by Sea Salt & Paper, it's ultimately too bland, lucky, and sloppy to be enjoyable. It's an okay way to kill time when I have no other options, but I never look forward to playing it, never have a desire to suggest it. I'd be fine if I never played it again.
Buy it from:
Amazon • Miniature Market • Noble Knight Games
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How many modern card games can you honestly say are "pocket-sized"? Like, truly able to slip into a jean pocket and be taken around wherever you go? Not many. Apart from Oink and Helvetiq, most board game publishers actively avoid micro-box games.
Which is, at least to some degree, why Sea Salt & Paper has blown up over the last few years. This miniscule 58-card game came out and turned heads, not just for its ultra-portability but also for how it evokes that "classic card game" feel with some modern design sensibilities mixed in. There's also the pastel-flavored origami artwork, which is one-of-a-kind.
But is there real depth to this quaint card game? Does it have enough staying power for long-term relevance? Here's how Sea Salt & Paper plays, how my experiences with it have gone, whether it's a card game you'll like, and if it's worth adding to your collection.
This review is based on my own personal copy of Sea Salt & Paper, which I bought new from Amazon. Not a free review copy.
Sea Salt & Paper is a set collection game with a few minor twists. Nothing about its gameplay is innovative, but the way it all comes together is what gives it its personality and makes it stand out.
Sea Salt & Paper's 58-card deck is comprised of four card types that come in nine colors: Yellow, Green, Pink, Purple, Light Blue, Dark Blue, Black, Gray, and White. The four card types are:
In Sea Salt & Paper, all the cards are shuffled into a single draw deck placed in the center of the table. The top two cards are drawn and placed face-up to create two discard piles.
On your turn, you can either draw a card from the top of a discard pile into your hand or draw two cards from the draw deck, choose one to keep in your hand, and discard the other to one of the two discard piles. If one of the two discard piles is empty, you must discard to that one.
Then, if you have a Duo of cards in your hand, you can play it to the table for its special action. A Duo played to the table is still yours and counts as part of your hand for scoring purposes. You can play multiple Duos on a turn if you have them in your hand.
The turns keep going until someone chooses to end the round. You can only end the round once you've collected at least 7 points (between the cards in your hand and the Duos you've played to the table). When you choose to end, you can do it by calling one of two things:
Then, you shuffle up and keep playing additional rounds until someone's running total crosses a point threshold based on how many players are playing: 40 points (2 players), 35 points (3 players), 30 points (4 players). Whoever crosses the threshold first is the winner!
I love when a card game has no extra setup beyond "shuffle up and deal," and that's certainly the case with Sea Salt & Paper—except this one doesn't even involve any dealing of cards. You shuffle up, flip over the top two cards, and that's it. You can honestly be ready to play in 1 minute.
As for table footprint, Sea Salt & Paper is delightfully compact. The main draw deck and two card piles don't take up much space at all. Each player does need a little bit of personal table space for any Duos they play, but it's pretty modest. And if you're in a real crunch for space, you can consolidate down to one pile per player. So, for example, you could potentially play Sea Salt & Paper on an airplane if you really wanted to.
While the core draw-and-discard action is simple, Sea Salt & Paper isn't exactly a simple game. You have to understand the different card types, which might be individually simple but pretty messy when put together. The Duo rules, the Mermaid rules, the color sets are finicky.
Not to mention the Stop and Last Chance rules, which aren't that complex on their own either, but the way they shake up scoring can be confusing. I've played several times now and I'm still not 100% clear on how everything scores when someone calls Last Chance. (Stop is more straightforward.)
All that to say, Sea Salt & Paper is neither intuitive, elegant, or refined. The flow and concept are simple on paper, but it has to click—and it might take several games before that clicking happens.
Sea Salt & Paper is a tactical game. What I mean by that is, even though you might have an overall strategy of how to gain points, you really don't have enough control to pursue an exact plan. On your turn, the most you can do is evaluate what the game presents to you, then choose the best option. You aren't carving out a path—you're making the most out of randomness.
Your first decision every turn: do I draw from the deck or the discard piles? If you see something you like on the discard piles, you take it; otherwise, you draw from the deck and hope for the best. Maybe you get something that fits the hand you're building, but maybe you don't. In the latter case, you just have to take something and hope it pans out.
When you draw from the deck, which card do you take? You actually draw two cards, then keep one and discard the other. Obviously, if one fits into your hand, then you should probably take it. But you'll also want to avoid throwing away a card that another player might need. If you drew an Anchor and you know the player ahead of you has the other Anchor, you don't want to throw it away and give it to them for free.
What's my best path to victory? Well, there isn't one best path. You take what you get. You might try to set up your hand to be versatile, to be able to benefit from as many cards as possible. But your path to victory is really dictated by whatever cards end up in your hand during the first few rounds. Want lots of points? Then you have to play to the potential of the cards given to you. If you try to brute-force a particular strategy, you're going to be frustrated.
What's the risk versus reward of the different cards? Duo cards are the most common cards by a mile, so if you want to play it safe, you can prioritize those—but they're inefficient for scoring points. Collector cards are good for points, but some are rarer than others and most don't even score any points until you have at least two of the same kind. Point Multipliers are the rarest card type, so if you encounter one, you should probably take it.
When do I play my Duos? Just because you have a Duo of Crabs in your hand doesn't mean you have to play it right away. In fact, you should hold onto your Duos and play them when they benefit you the most. If you just drew a Penguin Point Multiplier, maybe that's when you use your Duo of Crabs to retrieve that Penguin you tossed earlier. If someone is stacking up on Octopus cards, maybe you use your Duo of Shark and Swimmer to try stealing one and denying them those points. With Duos making up most of the deck, smart Duo plays are the core of Sea Salt & Paper.
When do I call Stop or Last Chance? And which one? This is the most important decision you can make. Last Chance is risky because you could lose the points in your hand, but it offers you the chance to pull ahead or catch up in points. Stop is much safer because you're guaranteed the points in your hand, but everyone else is also guaranteed their points. There's no right answer. It depends on the texture of the round and your risk tolerance.
Sea Salt & Paper isn't a memory game, but it does reward good memory. As players take from the discard piles, you'll know what they hold and you can approximate their points. You can also memorize the cards in each discard pile, which comes in handy when you play Duos of Crabs. If you know what's been played, you can assess the odds of what remains in the deck and adjust your decisions accordingly. Anyone who can count cards or memorize what people have done will have a big advantage.
Like a lot of "classic card games," Sea Salt & Paper is inherently a lucky game—and that's okay, as long as you go into it with that expectation. It's ultimately about risk management, pushing your luck, and fishing for cards based on what's come out and what remains in the deck.
Half of the time, you're top-decking. But when you do, you get to draw two and pick one, which provides some mitigation against luck. The other half of the time, you take from the discard piles, which are known values. That also helps to mitigate the luck, giving you the option to take what you can see or risk it on what you can't see. And then you have abilities like the Duo of Crabs, which lets you take any card from one of the discard piles. All of this gives you some control over how you build your own hand.
Even so, luck plays a major role. I mean, if you take an Anchor on your first turn, it's worth 0 until you finish the set with the second Anchor. There's only one other Anchor in the deck, though, and it could very well be at the bottom. Granted, that's an extreme example, but it applies to the whole game. You're playing the odds. And if I had to, I'd say that Sea Salt & Paper is about 70% luck and 30% strategy.
Sea Salt & Paper is a quiet, relaxing, laid-back game. It doesn't inspire table talk, nor does it have emotional highs or lows, nor does it have much tension. You draw, you discard, and sometimes you play a Duo. The game happens to you and you're just making the most of it.
It's a filler game, a time killer, one that's honestly kind of boring. While you can certainly take it very seriously in a try-hard-to-win sort of way if you want to, it's still mostly luck and the decisions are often straightforward. Will the better player come out ahead over many games? Yeah, probably. But if you look at any given game, you'll feel like you were railroaded.
With the simple draw-and-discard nature of each turn, and the fact that most of the decisions make themselves, Sea Salt & Paper plays pretty fast. Turns are quick and I've never seen anyone get stuck in analysis paralysis.
The overall game experience is mostly flat, though. You just trudge along from turn to turn, taking cards and hoping for the best on future turns. There's an uptick in tension near the end when you cross the 7-point threshold, when you aren't sure if others can call Stop/Last Chance and whether or not you should push your luck and go once more around or call the end yourself. Even then, I find that the end is often abrupt and anti-climactic.
Scoring is sort of a pain, too. Not that any of the scoring for sets is complicated to understand, but it's just so... tedious. And it's worse when someone calls Last Chance, which triggers the more confusing scoring method (for which I always have to refer to the rulebook). For me, this part is what really brings down the overall experience.
Not much player interaction here. There's a bit of indirect play when someone discards something you want and you're able to pick it up on your next turn. There's another bit of indirect play when you take a card that you suspect someone else wants. And then a bit of direct play when you use the Duo of Shark and Swimmer to steal a card from someone's hand.
Despite all that, Sea Salt & Paper is a ho-hum affair. You're mainly focused on massaging your own hand into the best it can be, and you don't need to pay attention to anyone else to do that. Tracking what they take and what they discard can certainly be helpful, but only for purposes of information. The actual gameplay is very much "on your own."
Given the tactical and luck-heavy nature of Sea Salt & Paper, I've found that it's best played as a two-player game. You get to see more of the deck, giving you more paths and opportunities to build a meaningful hand. It's easier to track what your opponent has and wants. It's more of a duel, with each of you having more control over the discard piles. The Last Chance mechanism feels less random when you're up against one other person.
Meanwhile, with more players, chaos takes over. The discard piles change a lot more between your turns, and sometimes the cards you need will show up and get buried before you have a chance to grab them. There's also a greater chance of other players holding onto the cards you need, so you unknowingly drag each other down. You have less overall information, so the odds are less in your control. The luck factor is amplified.
As I've mentioned above, Sea Salt & Paper feels like it plays itself most of the time. You have some light decisions to make, but you're really at the mercy of luck here. The cards come out however they come out and you may or may not find the cards you need. C'est la vie.
And it's essentially the same experience every time. There's no variability here. From hand to hand, game to game, session to session, you're fishing for points and hoping you score faster than everyone else. That's it. That's the game. It loses its luster fast and fades into insignificance just as quickly.
Sea Salt & Paper is a tiny production, and that's what I appreciate most about it. I wish more publishers had the courage and consideration to go smaller.
The pastel origami art is absolutely beautiful. And even if you don't think the art is necessarily beautiful—it's subjective, after all—you can't deny that the style is strikingly unique in the board game sphere. No one has done this before, making Sea Salt & Paper instantly recognizable. It's a lovely aesthetic that helps make it more of a relaxing affair.
The card colors are sometimes hard to tell apart. Especially when you play in an area without good lighting. For example, the Dark Blue and Black cards can appear to be the same at a glance. But more annoyingly, cards of the same color can sometimes appear different! And while each card does have an accessibility-friendly color icon that clears up any confusion, I do wish they chose a wider variety of colors and made them fully solid.
The card quality is good. I like the feel of the cards, which are thicker than expected and durable enough to withstand long-term abuse. Even so, a pure card game like this is going to wear out fast no matter the card quality, so keep your expectations in check. (If you're thinking of sleeving these cards, just know that they probably won't fit back in the box if you do.)
The player aid cards are super helpful. Pandasaurus Games understood that this game wasn't exactly intuitive and could use references for players. I'm grateful for these player aids because they were right. My enjoyment of the game would've been noticeably worse without these.
The box is compact and no bigger than it needs to be. Again, I'm pouring out my appreciation for the micro-box design. I just love it. It's one of my favorite things to see when a box is properly sized for a game, and that's absolutely the case here. Sea Salt & Paper is a compact beauty.
While I'm charmed by the concept and production of Sea Salt & Paper, it's ultimately too bland, lucky, and sloppy for me. Sure, it's an okay way to kill time when you have no other options—and the tiny box definitely makes it an easy game to carry around for such occasions—but I never look forward to playing it, never have a desire to suggest it.
I'd be fine if I never played it again. That said, if you're looking for a turn-off-your-brain, pass-the-time, chat-while-keeping-your-hands-busy sort of game, then I suppose Sea Salt & Paper fills that niche. The randomness and end-of-round tension keep it just interesting enough from play to play, plus you can't deny that it really is charming.
Buy it from:
Amazon • Miniature Market • Noble Knight Games
If you buy using these links, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It's one way to support me and this site. Thanks!
