We’re Sinking! review

We’re Sinking! is a visually striking and mechanically simple game built upon the players’ decisions. Will they let their greed drag them all to the ocean floor, or will they work together just long enough for one of them to get away with all the loot? I had the pleasure of playtesting this years ago at a D.C. game convention and was blown away by the prototype’s presentation, and I’m happy to say that the final gameplay doesn’t disappoint either.

Rules & Components

The rulebook is great, with plenty of graphic examples and an easily navigable layout. I never had any issues learning the game or checking for rule clarifications (though I didn’t need many), so it did its job well. There’s also a cardboard “Duties Checklist” that gets passed to the acting First Mate each turn, which walks them through each step of the game round. After a super quick teach and narrating my process as the initial First Mate, I rarely get more than a couple of questions in subsequent rounds.

The components here are fantastic. The chunky plastic ship makes for some great table presence and creates a great visual reminder of our pirates’ impending doom. The dials are similarly solid, with large colored rivets (if you’ve ever used those chintzy little ones, you’ll know that quality does make a difference). The cards themselves have a nice linen finish, so I can feel less bad about not sleeving them. The art is also incredibly charming; I’m very glad I was able to snag a sticker of the Shark and its gaping maw when I playtested it.

Even the box deserves a callout, since not only does it have a decent insert with plenty of room (possibly for a future expansion?), but there’s a packing guide on the outside of the lower half! More games need to be doing this, since there’s plenty of real estate for it, and we really don’t need to keep putting advertisements for other games there.

My only complaint is that after a little over half a dozen plays, one of the sails cracked a bit, and now I have to be extra careful when setting it up. I would have preferred if they were made out of a less brittle material, but they’re purely cosmetic and don’t affect the actual gameplay at all.

Gameplay

We’re Sinking is a co-opportunistic game where everyone needs to work together to defeat the enemy before the ship sinks, but only the richest pirate actually wins. Or, if things look like they’re going poorly, be the lightest—have the fewest cards in hand—to ensure that you reach the last lifeboat when the ship does sink. It’s not quite a “hidden traitor” style game, since it’s every pirate for themselves from the get-go, but more of a “co-opportunistic” game since players do need to work together at least a bit for the ship to survive. Intentionally working against the ship can actually be difficult at times if enough of the other players can competently keep the ship afloat.

The game’s subtitle is “A Pirate’s Dilemma,” and while the prisoner’s dilemma is present in the game, it only plays a part. Each round, players publicly declare their actions until everyone’s locked in and their true actions (set by the dials) are revealed. Some actions benefit from being the first player to take them (rewarding initial honesty) while others prefer to be the last player (rewarding lying). Most of these actions end up helping the ship directly in some way, except Plundering, which also happens to be the best way to get good loot for yourself. This is also the real prisoner’s dilemma of the game. If multiple people Plunder, they split the available loot evenly, but if a single person takes the action, they get everything. However, if there are more Plunderers than there is loot, it’s all discarded. This leads to plenty of classic prisoner’s dilemma shenanigans, with players constantly jostling to get the best pick of the treasures. At the same time, if the ship goes down, none of it’s worth anything.

The rest of the actions of the game are intuitive and simple, and the large player aids make them extra clear, just like the First Mate reference. The only stumbling block with new players has to do with the special treasure cards. While most of the treasure cards are simply valuable gems and whatnot, some of them are utility items that can be used to improve your actions, help or hurt your fellow pirates, or mess with the game in other ways. They tell you when you’re allowed to use them and what they do in pretty simple terms/icons, but the hiccup is that you aren’t allowed to use multiple items with the same triggering condition. For example, if two items trigger when you Bucket water out of the ship, you can’t play them both, even if they have different effects. But if one item triggers when you reveal that you’re going to Bucket and the other triggers when you actually perform the bucketing, then that’s perfectly fine. Luckily, this doesn’t come up very often, but I see most new players make this mistake at least once (despite mentioning the restriction a couple times) and are predictably annoyed when their little combo is cut off. I don’t think the ruling is unreasonable, nor is it really that much to remember, but the rest of the game is so in-your-face with its clarity and explaining what everything does that this one rule is easy to forget.

The game has some variety and customizable difficulty in the form of the different enemies. Each enemy shuffles two unique items into the deck (or six identical Cursed Amulets, in the Skullsairs case) and adds additional rules to the game. Some are simple, like the Kraken, which mostly attacks more often and rolls more dice as it gets injured, while others have funky effects, such as the Sirens, which can prevent players from speaking and mess with how actions are declared. Each enemy feels different enough to be interesting without feeling like a completely different game. One of my favorites is the Skullsairs, since they steal treasure for the players manning the cannons to reclaim (and the Cursed Amulets feel very on-theme). I’ve still yet to actually fend off the Navy, since their Target Damage can be quite nasty.

Conversely, the variety between the different players feels a bit lackluster. Each player's color is associated with a signature unique item, but once the item is used, it gets shuffled into the deck like any other item. After that, every player is pretty much the same. If the players had persistent differences, like special abilities, it could mechanically incentivize some players towards fighting off the enemy or letting the ship sink based on what they’re good at, which I understand wanting to avoid. But then why have this minor bit of enforced difference to begin with? It’s too little to really mean much in the long run, but too much to just be ignored completely. Especially when it adds an extra step to packing the game away.

Which brings me to my biggest (though honestly minor) gripe about We’re Sinking!: It’s a cinch to set up, but finicky to pack away. Once you’re done with the game, you have to sort through the singular Water Deck to separate the Clear Water, Treasures, player-specific Treasures, and enemy-specific Treasures. This isn’t really a big deal, but it’s just enough to be mildly annoying. Maybe I’m just bothered by sorting cards, since I also dislike that part of deckbuilders with a pre-set market like Dominion (though needing to “design” a good market is even more troublesome, personally).

We’re Sinking! can also occasionally have an issue with runaway leaders. It can become fairly obvious when one or two players are in the running for a victory while you’re left in the dust, and there’s often little you can do to effectively stop them. At a certain point, efforts to sink the ship are too little too late—especially if there are upgraded cannons able to more consistently deal damage—or the breaches are too strong for you to have any chance of keeping the boat afloat. Quickly shedding cards isn’t really a possibility, and efforts to stock up on treasure can be easily thwarted. However, this doesn’t really happen out of nowhere and is usually the result of poor early game planning on my the player’s part.

The game experience is also very dependent on your player group. The game is at its best when everyone is at least a bit cutthroat towards each other, and it doesn’t really work as well if played like a cooperative game. You also need to make it clear that, despite the enticingly colorful visuals, this game is ultimately about backstabbing. I’m not sure what else people would expect from a game about pirates, but you never know.

Like I said, these are pretty small issues in an otherwise solid game. It looks great and plays well, and is always a hit whenever I bring it to the table. While not the first co-opportunistic game, it’s definitely one of the easiest for new players to get into (compared to more intricate examples like Dead of Winter or Zimby Mojo).