Did you ever think that you would have the opportunity to
design your own goldfish? Here is your chance to be creative, and if you do a
great job, you will devise a pet that earns the title of The Finest Fish! Everyone
starts with a game board shaped like a goldfish. Also included is a round
progress board and goldfish marker, fish scale tokens, a goldfish bowl board, a
first player token, and a deck of cards with pattern goals. The objective of
the game is to create a goldfish worth the most points. There are three ways to
do this: 1) complete patterns found on cards, 2) create clusters of three or
more of the same color fish scales, and 3) place black scales on your fish to earn
additional points.
Players start with one card each and another three cards are
revealed face-up next to the deck. Fish
scale tokens are put in the cloth bag, and sets of three random tokens are put
in the center of the table (one set per player count). A single token is placed
in the goldfish bowl. Each round, players can decide to take one of the sets of
scales and place any number of them on your goldfish board. You can spend one
of these scales and purchase one of the displayed pattern cards, or trade any
of the scales acquired during the current turn for scale tokens in the fishbowl,
the number of which grows during the round. When everyone has completed their
turn, the round ends and preparation for the next round takes place in the
following steps.
- Advance the goldfish token on the round marker board. If it lands on a refresh symbol, discard all scales in the fishbowl, remove the rightmost card from the displayed pattern cards, slide cards to the right and refill with a new pattern card.
- Choose new groups of random scale tokens from the bag.
- Pass the first player marker to the player on your left.
Rounds continue until someone has filled their goldfish with scale tokens and all players complete their final turn. Scores are tallied and the player with the most points wins! For 2-4 players with a 30–60-minute game time. I enjoyed my time with this game but the one caveat I would offer is that until you are familiar with the fish boards and the tokens with regard to the shapes of the scales, you must be careful to face the scales in the proper direction to match the fish board and also translate those placements properly with the goal cards. ~Marsha