OUR REVIEW

I want to be an Iceberg

SOS TITANIC

Better Alone than together

The idea of a cooperative game is luring us with the unspoken promise of a salutary game universe: Together we solve thrilling tasks as equal partners, console each other or encourage each other when we suffer disappointments or setbacks and are in a fever of excitement to encounter the outcome of our challenging adventure and fulfillment of our time investment. Finally, in intimate harmony we can feel the uniting experience of joint mourning or even the euphoric happiness of a universal celebration of victory! Joyfully dancing we embrace laughingly and experience the intensive feeling of "If we mastered this game, we can save the world, too! Everything is hunky-dory for all and sundry!! Young and old, man and woman, even casual and experienced gamers are at peace at long last!"

The reality if often quite different: the common ground is restricted to the - mostly already doomed before its start - effort to puzzle out unclear or incomplete instructions. The Gamma player stares at the board like a rabbit in front of the snake and can, due to his panic to doom the whole group due to his possibly wrong action, not come to a decision; and so the only thing that moves for quite some time is a droplet of sweat on his forehead. The Beta player pays - after he has grasped the basic mechanisms of the game - only scant attention to events unfolding on the game board and prefers to leave through sundry rules, because "in case of cooperative games it does not matter what one does, after all". But the worst of all is the Alpha player: He is a little bit in the know already (or, at least believes to be in the know) and sets about to explain to all others pushily and obtrusively what they should do or refrain from doing. Soon, therefore, disagreement springs up, maybe even a quarrel, because somebody dared to deviate from those instructions and recommendations, permanently provided with a vengeance. So soon there is as much peace at the table as at a world climate conference and the noble intention of realizing a joint goal collapses onto itself like a failed Salzburger Nockerl soufflé.

Why not search for the true competitive confrontation in a board game rather than backhandedly slugging out those indirect confrontation originating in a cooperative game? As a final consequence one should probably play cooperative games alone. The presence of only one other player might at the start be argued for with the option about telling each other about maybe forgotten rules details. I myself, in any case, can only think of three games which could really justify the concept of cooperative game play:

„Space Alert“ (2008; Vlaada Chvátil) elegantly avoids - due to the provided time pressure element - the problem of a fellow player wanting to dictate events to others, as in the general hassle everybody is quite busy with his own job. Only when players realize that , if you want to succeed, it is not enough to behave as one does in any well-working organization - everyone does what he wants, but nobody knows what he is doing - people will begin to communicate constructively by talking to each other and begin to coordinate themselves.

„Die Legenden von Andor“ (2012, Michael Menzel), on the other hand, can convince due to its narrative structure, due to which the exact tasks of the individual adventures are experienced casually on the run and players thus really can participate together in a story that is equally unknown to all of them at the beginning (at least when you get first acquainted with the individual "legends").

And the little winner of "Game of the Year" from last year - „Hanabi“ (Antoine Bauza) - cannot, due to the cards held back-to-front, be played alone; however, its implementation opens the door for new conflict. In Hanabe players can quarrel not only about the incompetence of others, but also about which information can be given in a valid clue and which cannot.

And what connection does all this have to „SOS Titanic“? Well, already on page 3 of the rules it is conceded, with striking truthfulness, that "you can play the game alone"! In that case one makes all the decision oneself - and that' as it is meant to be! The advantage of playing alone is also based on the fact that "SOS Titanic" is a variant of Solitaire/Patience card placement. And who would ever dream of playing Solitaire/Patience together with several other players - not for nothing this leisure pastime is tainted with the repute of being a favorite pastime of Dowager Privy Counsellors. In "SOS Titanic", too, we are task to first sort a chaotic disorder among several face-down rows of cards, first into a descending order, and then into an ordered ascending sequence. Similar to the „Mystery Rummy“ series by Mike Fitzgerald, the proven and well-known game mechanism is not only enriched with new concepts, but also clad into a very harmonious topic. In "SOS Titanic" cards represent passengers of the ship Titanic who must be, in painstaking order, be guided into the correct life rafts, the respective first card of each stack.

Contrary to a normal pack of cards there are only two colors in "SOS Titanic": Purple represents the First Class, the Second Class passengers must be content with yellow. This, to begin with, makes sorting easier, of course. On the other hand, card values are present twice each and in yellow there are twice 17 cards, contrary to 13 as highest value in purple or in a standard deck. As an additional very noticeable specialty in "SOS Titanic" you have a certain time pressure: When the sorting of cards, that is, the saving of passengers, take too long the Titanic, as is known, sinks and we have "Game over".

At least, we can, even in the case of failure and sinking of the ship, enjoy a smaller or bigger quantity of victory points, whereby anything higher than 20 are pronounced to be better than the quota of saved passengers on the historic ship; and those 20 points can be achieved nearly always. A "resolving" of the Patience game earns you at least 60 points, but the absolute possible maximum of 100 points is only a theoretical goal, unless you do not shuffle the cards at the end of a previously won game.

The time factor in the game is represented by a very nicely and prettily done ring book, which illustrates the sinking of the Titanic and can also be used as a big "flipbook": On each side you find the current status of the sinking and each page shows on how many decks of the ship you can still accommodate passengers; one deck is represented by one row of cards. With each turning of page more water enters the ship and soon the first deck is completely flooded. The cards placed there do not drown instantly, but they crowd into the next deck and cause more chaos among the passengers already in this deck - the cards in those two rows must be re-shuffled and laid out again face-down. This is of course especially galling if you have already painstakingly achieved some kind of order in one or two of the respective rows of cards and must now begin again with sorting under more difficult conditions.

One leaf/page of the ring book is turned over when, after drawing cards from the face-down stack no suitable passenger turns up, so that in none of the different rows and stacks a card can be placed. The re-shuffling for a new draw-pile is also thus individual rows and stacks penalized.

The optional choices on the one hand come from different individual character cards, on the other hand from action cards. At the start of the game you are assigned a certain crew member to embody and thus have different starting conditions and special abilities at your command which need to be used gainfully. Action cards allow you some pretty drastic interventions with the basic rules, for instance checking the draw pile and placing of a thus chosen card, re-arranging row of cards, and so on. Very often the decision on the use of cards at the right time can be a deciding factor in the game. If you do it too early they are maybe not effective enough; if you use them too late it could be too late for their effects. Anyhow, important in any case is a good memory as regards to already revealed and then turned-over-again cards; on the one hand you should memorize in which row cards that you have already seen are placed and, on the other hand, which cards are in the discard pile and will appear again when this is re-shuffled. For this you can also "cheat" and allow yourself to leaf through the discard pile; the game is meant to be fun and should not turn into mental torment.

As a certain deficit in the basically rather simple rules I have to mention certain phrasings. If there would not be the very well-illustrated examples one would be hard put to manage a first game, and this despite the fact that the basic mechanism of the game is standard knowledge. For instance, the drawing of cards is named, very dodgy, as "prepare the saving of passenger". Unfortunately, this phrase is repeated elsewhere so that you have repeatedly to translate those phrases into something that you can understand. The symbols of the individual action cards, on the other hand, are per se logical, but not easily grasped, even in repeated games, so that you have to check often on the descriptions of effects of action cards. However, each passenger card from value 2 up, is happily given its own illustration, and the lower values allow you, very correctly, to save women and children first.

In any case, it is again and again thrilling to engage yourself in saving lives. Aside from the different character cards the variation mainly comes from the individual action cards, so that the short duration of the game invites you to repeated games. Furthermore, the rules offer options that you can use to make things, that is, survival more difficult for you. Victory or defeat, however, depend more on the friendliness of the cards, meaning their initial distribution then on your own dexterity, but you are here at least allowed the impression that the achieving of the game's aim together with the fate of several dozens of people is in your own hands. Or does my frequent defeat lie in the fact that I simply pay too badly? Maybe I should get some support from other players? How fortunate that "SOS Titanic" is, after all, a cooperative game!

Harald Schatzl

Players: 1-5

Age: 8+

Time: 30+

Designer: Bruno Cathala, Ludovic Maublanc

Artist: Sandra Fesquet

Price: ca. 20 Euro

Publisher: Heidelberger Spieleverlag 2013

Web: www.heidelbaer.de

Genre: Card sorting, card placement

Users: For families

Special: 1 player

Special: Many players

Version: de

Rules: de en jp

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Rules and symbols make for a difficult access

Best as a solitaire game

Box size because of the ring-book

Compares to:

Solitaire, Mystery Rummy

Other editions:

Ludonaute, France

My rating: 5

Harald Schatzl:

SOS Titanic takes playing Solitaire/Patience s into the 21^st century by giving it new ideas and a harmonious background story and gives you at home and abroad (maybe on a cruise) lots of challenging solitaire games, may you can let Kate and/or Leonardo play with you.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 2

Communication (red): 2

Interaction (brown): 0

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0