Sidequest: 7th Sea

• Designers: Jakub Caban and Bartosz Idzikowski
• Publisher: Board & Dice
• Players: 1-4 (would not recommend more than 2)
• Age: 14
• Time: 60-90 minutes on box.  84 minutes in actual time in my solo play
• Played: once with review copy provided by publisher

  

Hurry! From what you’ve heard in the inn the Dragonsteel Shield can be found in Nüllrode, but the Inquisition is already on their way! You’re lucky they chose to use the roads – you can overtake them using the shortcut. A few hours, two terrified settlements, and one totally honorable saber duel later, you are here. The village looks boring, but there is an old, pagan chapel, seemingly sealed tightly. Sneaking in is not an option, so it’s time to get these doors open!

Get inside the chapel and reach for treasure before others! SideQuest: 7th Sea is an escape room-style game set in the world of well-known TTRPG system 7th Sea, published by Chaosium.

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT – I won’t spoil any of the puzzles, but I will describe the architecture of the game a bit just so you understand how it works. If you’d rather not know, then skip to the “My Thoughts on the Game” section.  Though, honestly, I don’t think that anything I will describe in the structural sense would lessen your enjoyment of the game should you play it…

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So, when you unshrink the box, you’ll find that the first thing you see is: “Start Here.  This game has no rule book”…  And, as it turns out, you’ll end up learning the game as you play.   You are directed to take the first card from the deck and read it, and thus begins the rules.  Sure, it’s not a “book” but instead it is words on cards.  

There are plenty of other things in the box other than cards – you’ll see a few “sheets” as well as some punchboards.   They are all clearly labeled and the game tells you when you will need certain things.  This game is essentially a bunch of puzzles that you will have to work through; and as you need certain props, you’ll get access to them.

There is a pretty neat answer matrix that you use to check your answers.  Essentially, each puzzle gives you a four color/character/number answer, and you will transpose these values onto the answer matrix.  If you have given the right answer, you’ll get a clever checksum to ensure that your answer is correct and then you’ll be directed to a new card in the deck to continue your adventure.  Work through the deck of cards, solve the puzzles, and then at the end, the game will rate you on how you did.

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My thoughts on the game

Sidequest: 7th Sea is the second game in this new puzzle series. One of the more intriguing features for me is that this is set in the world of a boardgame, but not one that Board & Dice has published.  The art is very reminiscent of the original board game on which it is based, though it is important to know that you need no previous experience with Nemesis to enjoy this.  Knowledge of the original game will not help you at all – the puzzles here are essentially independent of that. FWIW, I haven’t played 7th Sea, so I can say for sure that everything worked just fine without me knowing a dang thing about the base game…

The format here is very similar to Side Quest: Nemesis.  You’ll tuck sheets into the box and then work thru the deck of cards using punchboard things as directed.   Overall, the puzzles here were a little harder than SQ: Nemesis.  I again needed the hint sheet included in the game – this time on two occasions.  The hints can be quite useful when you hit a wall and can’t figure out how to complete a puzzle.  Some of the puzzles have a single hint while others give you sequential levels of hints – I think that this is probably a reflection of the overall difficulty of each puzzle.  Some of the puzzles are really quite simple and I’d have a hard time coming up with more than one level of hint for them!

I really liked almost everything about this one as far as the puzzle-game goes.  It’s compact, has puzzles that seem fair (well, maybe one that was a bit of a stretch).  The one thing I did not agree with was the player count.  For me, this series is best played with 1 player, and would likely work with two players…. but definitely never with 4. 

Having learned from our experience with SQ: Nemesis, we just passed this one around the local group allowing people to try it solo.  The cards and bits are so small that realistically only one player can work on things at a time.  You might be able to have someone look over your shoulder, but there’s no way that four people can participate simultaneously on a puzzle, and the game is so linear that you’re only working on one puzzle at a time.  Sure, it would be helpful sometimes to bounce ideas off of other people, but it’s more of a frustration when three people are sitting around the table watching the fourth person actually solve the puzzle.  To prevent that, we just turned this into a solo activity.

For this second game in the series, I brought it to work and set it up on my desk and worked on it off and on over the course of a slow day.  Because of this, it’s hard to say how long it took me to get through the game – but it was a nice way to experience the game at my own pace.

On the bright side, nothing is destroyed in solving the game, so we just ended up passing it around the group, and we’ll likely this copy away when my group is done with it.   If you’re interested in it, leave a note in the comments below.  One curious thing is that if you want everything to fit back in the box, you might need to put all the chits back into the punchboards – the well in the box insert doesn’t really fit the components otherwise… Also, it would make it much easier for the next person as they can quickly find the requested punchboard and get the pieces they need to solve their puzzle.  You probably don’t want to throw out the insert as you will use it setting up the game to hold some of the sheets in place.

The game is a one-and-done, like almost every game in the genre, as the solutions to the puzzles never change.  The difficulty on the box is rated at 3 out of 4, and this feels like a fair rating.  It did seem a little harder than SQ: Nemesis, and it took me about 10 minutes longer to solve (and I needed two hints instead of one).  I’d be happy to recommend this for anyone looking for a small and compact puzzle solving experience.  

OK, so I started a giveaway on the previous review – and now that I have more information from the publisher – I will continue it here.  The offer is now for one winner to get both games.  If you entered on the previous review, that entry still counts – and you can also enter below by leaving a comment.  I will draw a winner at random in about a week and contact them via the email associated with the comment.  As I understand it, the winner will have games drop shipped from the publisher.  Good luck!

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y
• Neutral.
• Not for me…