Coral Castle preview – Draft a fish, play a mermaid

94% of all wildlife on this planet lives beneath the planet’s oceans and only 20% of the ocean has been explored. This leaves us with a whole lot of possibilities lying within the depths. Who says that there aren’t kraken or human fish hybrids swimming about? In Coral Palace, players get to explore the ocean and the merpeople who help keep the oceans together. Coral Castle is a drafting and combo-making game for 1-5 players from Lime Green Games designer and founder, Travis Deere. Over three rounds of simultaneous play, players will draft cards, collect pearls, and play cards to a tableau to move up various tracks.

At the beginning of the game, players will select three sets of cards from six options. Each set has cards featuring different labels and abilities for players to utilize. Cards will usually feature an icon, allowing players to move up one of four tracks on the central board while others will manipulate other aspects of the game, creating combos with other cards. A number of pearl cards are also added to the combined deck, based on the player count. Each round, players will be given 9 cards from the deck and a drafting phase will take place. Players will take a card, add it to their player board, and then pass the remaining cards to the next player. This will continue until players have collected nine new cards. In a 2-player game, players will keep a card and discard a card each drafting round. They will then draw a new card from the deck before passing their cards, allowing players to see more options from the deck throughout the game. 

After drafting is concluded, players will collect pearls from the supply based on any symbols present on their cards. Pearls are used as currency to play certain cards to their tableau in the next phase and serve as a tiebreaker at the end of the game. After collecting pearls, players will simultaneously play 6-8 cards, depending on the round, to a tableau to the side of their player board. Some cards will require payment while some cards will require specific other cards to be played to the tableau in order to enter play. Once all cards are played, players will systematically work through scoring using the tracks on the central board. Players will move their markers based on the number of symbols present in their tableau combined with any multipliers.

Each track has ten spaces with two spaces giving players bonuses when a token lands on or passes through. After a token reaches the end of a track a piece of coral in the player color is placed at the end and the player token is moved back to the start. The players who have the most coral and are furthest along each track will score bonus points at the end of the game. After scoring, players can keep 4 or 5 cards, depending on which round they are entering, which will be added to the nine drafted cards in the next round. After three rounds, each track is evaluated and the player with the most points wins. 

Solo Variant

In the solo mode, you will face off against Lord Frith. The biggest change comes in the drafting mode of the game. When setting up cards, the human player will divide 18 cards into various piles. The human player will take a pile, draft a card for themselves, and then give a card to Lord Frith. Any other cards left in the pile are set aside. After going through the first piles, the set-aside cards are divided into piles, continuing the process until each player has 9 cards. The human player will then play their cards as normal. Lord Frith will not collect pearls and instead collect points if any pearl cards are in their possession. Scoring proceeds as normal and the human player will keep cards, as in a normal game. The difficulty level of Lord Frith is determined by how many cards Lord Frith gets to keep each round.

Overall Thoughts

Coral Castle was a great experience. The game has simple mechanics and is easy to pick up, making it a great entry point for younger players to learn drafting and combo building. Players have both immediate strategic decisions when deciding what cards to play in the current round and can also plan for future rounds when choosing which cards to keep. The base game comes with six different sets of cards, with the A-B-C sets teaching the basics of the game and further sets adding more interactive card mechanisms. 

While we were only given a rough prototype to play though, the planned visuals for the game are stunning. The color palette and artwork for the game transport the players to the ocean floor and help give the game a mystical undersea ambiance. Each player's color will have a different sea creature to represent them on the tracks. One of the coolest features is colored coral pieces that will be slotted into the board at the end of each track. As the game progresses, a coral garden will appear, increasing the table presence with each cycle of a track. 

Coral Castle will launch on Kickstarter on February 18th, 2025. The Kickstarter will feature three tiers with a basic version with all you need to play up to five players. A deluxe version will feature colorful 3D clamshells to hold a player’s pearl tokens. An all-in version will add components for a sixth player and two more card sets featuring creatures from the Marianas Trench. Click here to check out the Kickstarter campaign or visit Lime Green Games here to check out information about the company and their other game.