Shallow Seas Components Overview and Impressions
Bad Comet is one of my favorite board game publishers and for good reason – not only are their games really fun to play, but the production quality is off the charts. It also doesn’t hurt that a lot of their games have cute animal meeples…that always helps! With games like Wild Serengeti, Life of the Amazonia, and Wondrous Creatures under their belts, I knew that Shallow Seas was going to be something special.
We were definitely not disappointed, at least when it came to the game’s production. I know a board game production is going to be top notch when, if the game includes cloth bags, that these bags not only feel great, but are stitched on the inside as well. So many companies offer cloth bags to store components, and too often the seams of these bags are either glued, or hastily and messily stitched, with stitches obviously coming out in various spots. That isn’t the case here. The bags feel great, and the quality is outstanding.
Another sign of a good production is a great insert. Although Shallow Seas doesn’t really have an insert per se, it does have trays to hold all of the game’s numerous Sealife tiles – even better, there are enough spaces for all the included tiles, which means the ones from the expansion as well. And they all fit in the base box, which is phenomenal. These trays make setting up the game incredibly easy.
I feel like this wouldn’t be a classic Bad Comet title without some great screen printed, wooden pieces, and we get that here as well. Between the base game and the expansion, we are treated to dozens of colorful fish, 8 wooden turtle pieces, and 4 legendary fish. The screen printing, as usual, is fantastic, and when this game is going it really looks great.
There are a few cards in the game, and the quality of the cards is perfectly fine. I wouldn’t bother sleeving these ones as you won’t be shuffling them like crazy, but rather just picking a few cards to use each game.
I’m glad to see Bad Comet using fantastic punchboards for this release. It’s no secret that I wasn’t a fan of the punch boards or the cardboard thickness in one of their previous releases – Life of the Amazonia – but the quality here is fantastic. This is important as all the tiles will be thrown into a draw bag and will be moved around and handled often. Even after nearly a dozen plays, everything is holding up really well.
We will have a full review of Shallow Seas coming up shortly on the site, so stay tuned for that. From a production standpoint, though, this game gets an A+!
Article By Adam Roffel
