Spin Shells Your Way, Take Your Chances with Rats, and Fight for Room in a Small World by Yourself

In Moonshell, you play as a mermaid who is shifting tides in your direction to collect valuable seashells and create a stunning collection.

In more detail, the game board features a 5x5 array of colorful seashells of different types. Five public objectives are revealed, showing players the seashells they want to collect — whether by type, color, or overall pattern — on their 3x4 treasure chest board. You receive two secret objectives, keeping one and discarding the other. If you wish, you can play with each player taking a mermaid character (each of which has a unique power) and a moonshell, which serves as a wild seashell.

On a turn, you take three actions, repeating actions if you like. The actions are:

—Rotate: Turn the game board 90º in the direction of the tide.
—Pull 2: If the two rock spaces on the side of the game board next to you don't have any seashells on them, choose a column, place the first two seashells in this column on these rocks, slide the remaining seashells toward you, then draw from the supply bag to fill the empty spaces.
—Collect: Take a seashell from a rock in front of you, and add it to your treasure chest, sliding the seashell to the bottom of the column in which you place it.


If the bag runs out of seashell tiles, add the sea urchin tiles to the bag and continue playing. When someone has filled their treasure chest with twelve tiles, finish the round, then score. The "trove" objective scores only for the player who has the most seashells of that type or color, whereas the other four types of objectives — collector, array, pairs, composition — can be scored by each player, sometimes multiple times. You also score 1 point for each sea urchin and if you achieved your secret objective, you score for that, too. Whoever scores the most points wins.

The Piratz deck consists of fifty treasure cards, with each card showing one or more items on it; these items can be any of the six types of treasure or a rat. Each player receives a shovel card, and you place scoring cubes (worth 1-4 points) on a score card, with one cube next to each of the six types of treasure in a two-player game and two cubes each in a game with three or four players.

On a turn, either you reveal the top card from the deck and place it face up on the table or you pass on revealing a card. If you reveal a card that has a rat on it while another rat is already visible, you must take one of these rat cards and add it to your collection. If you pass on revealing a card, you must choose a type of treasure and collect all cards that have this treasure on it; you may also name a treasure type after revealing a card if the rats didn't catch you.


After taking one or more cards, place your shovel card on a face-up treasure card, then sit out until all players have placed their shovels, with the last player taking as many turns as desired as long as the rats stay away. You then each reclaim your shovel, while removing the covered cards from play. Continue taking turns until the deck is exhausted; if not all players have placed their shovels at this point, shuffle the removed cards and continue play until all shovels have been placed.

For each treasure type (rings, coins, etc.), players count how many of these items they have on their cards, with the player who has the most (and secondmost in a game with more than two players) claiming a scoring cube for this treasure type. Once all the cubes have been claimed, sum the value of your cubes to see who wins.