Sea Scroll Card Game Review

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Updated : May 19, 2026 5:47pm UTC

took the gaming world by storm with its simple but enthralling push-your-luck gameplay making it appealing to both casual players and hobbyists alike. A part of its success was down to its straightforward probability formula: each card had a number, and there were that many cards of that number in the deck. That made it intuitive for players to have a feel for the chances of drawing another. Now Sea Scroll has borrowed that concept but turned it on its head: rather than trying to avoid duplicates, you’re collecting them. Can it build on its predecessor's popularity?

As is often the case with small-box card games there’s nothing in the box aside from a deck of cards. But as we highlighted in our

review, there’s value in having a decent-sized box to store your cards. It’s more convenient, hard-wearing and physically appealing than a tuckbox, especially with the foil detail on the box here, making the lettering pop and the fish scales shine as they should.

Fortunately the cards included are visually rich enough to impress all by themselves. Unusually the game’s artist, Yulia Brodskaya, is already recognized and acclaimed outside of the tabletop gaming world. She uses a technique called quilling to layer paper, resulting in unique and intricate designs that rival the look and feel of paint and pen for detail. Hence the name “Sea Scroll.” Each of the nine fish species included in the game has its own portrait and they’re fascinating to study and enjoy between turns.

All of Sea Scroll’s fishy gameplay revolves around its fishy card deck in which, you’ll recall, there are as many of each fish type as the number printed on that species’ card. Twelve Clownfish, for example, or four Regal Tangs, these being the highest and lowest values available. Before play, you may remove certain fish from the deck, plus a selection of random cards, depending on the number of players at the table. If you frequently play with different player counts this can be a bit of a pain. You then deal two cards to each player and lay out four random cards face-up in a row.

Turns are fast and simple. You draw two random cards off the top of the deck into your hand. You may then choose one group of face-up fish and add them to your collection but there are two important caveats to this decision. First, any fish you take this way are placed in front of you, face-up, so everyone can see what you’re collecting and how many you have. Second, it’s something you can only do three times during each game, as tracked by the number of piles before you. Finally you discard a card into the row of face-up fish: if it matches a value already there, it stacks with it.

Once the draw deck is depleted and a final turn is played, it’s time to reveal your hand alongside your collection of face-up cards and tally scores. It’s simple, but vicious: if you have the most of any given fish type, you get the number of points printed on the card. If you have at least one of that fish type, but don’t have the most, you lose that number of points instead. Given how swingy and critical this is to the overall gameplay, the rules sensibly suggest that you double-check that everyone understands how scoring works before you start play.

If you have at least one of that fish type, but don’t have the most, you lose that number of points instead.