Heroes of the Reef: The Art and World of Tidal Blades

I see board games in the store and they always look so cool and then I buy them and bring them home, I’m so excited to open them, and then I play them, like, twice… This column is dedicated to the love of games for those of us whose eyes may be bigger than our stomachs when it comes to playing, and the joy that we can all take from games, even if we don’t play them very often.

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As is often the case with the games I cover here, it was the artwork that first drew me to Tidal Blades. At the time, I was pretty involved in checking out new variations on the dungeon crawler and similar fantasy games, and the bright, island-set worlds presented in Tidal Blades, along with characters who were frequently anthropomorphic turtles, axolotls, and so on, were a very appealing change of pace from much of what was out there.

The art and design of the world is credited to “Mr. Cuddington,” actually the husband-and-wife duo of David Forest and Lina Cossette, who have worked on such other board game titles as Charterstone, Santorini, and Steampunk Rally. According to their website, however, Tidal Blades is their “proudest endeavor.”

And they’re right to be proud of it. Leaving aside how the game plays for the time being, it looks great, filled with welcoming and evocative art, intriguing worldbuilding, and play dashboards that look fun to use. Besides a sequel that, like the first, was funded via Kickstarter, Tidal Blades has also given rise to a roleplaying game released in 2024, coinciding with the Kickstarter for the game’s second chapter.

Written predominantly by Shanna Germain and released by Monte Cook Games, the hefty RPG book is every bit as bright and fun-looking as the board games that inspired it, and similarly filled to bursting with art from the Mr. Cuddington duo, though, at the time of this writing, I haven’t gotten a chance to do much more than page through it.

Obviously, everything about Tidal Blades is a labor of love for the pair, and it boasts more original art than most games twice its size, all of it created by Forest and Cossette, and doing much of the heavy lifting to breathe life into a world of tropical islands, mechanical watercraft, amphibious creatures, and intriguing characters.

The game itself is not a dungeon crawler, though it shares some characteristics with that breed. Instead, you take control of a hero who aspires to be a Tidal Blade, an “elite guardian” of the islands you call home. To prove your mettle, you must compete in a tournament, which involves visiting various islands and completing “challenges.”

This leads to gameplay that combines elements of several different types of board game. There are the “leveling” aspects often found in dungeon crawlers, as your dice and your traits increase in power and supply as you play, and there are strategy and resource management elements, as well, not to mention hand management, re-rolling and locking, and several others, depending upon which challenge you are undertaking at the time.

As is often the case with these kinds of games and their proprietary dice, the dice in Tidal Blades do not have numbers on them. Instead, they have symbols, and when you attempt to complete a challenge or fight a monster, you’re rolling to try to match the symbols needed on that challenge, or on the monster’s card.

There are many different ways to score points in the course of a game of Tidal Blades. Completing challenges and defeating monsters can do it, but so can improving your own traits, advancing along a shared champion board, and completing a secret goal, of which other players may not be aware.

It’s a complex game in spite of its relatively short rule book, which clocks in at only twenty pages or so. This is possible partly because there is also a twenty-page “almanac” covering things like specific rules from different islands and challenges, card interactions, and so on – meaning that, in essence, the rulebook is really more like forty pages long.

There’s also an expansion called Angler’s Cove that adds new complications and an ability to play the game with up to five people. Though Tidal Blades isn’t cooperative, like many dungeon crawlers, it can be played with as few as one player, through a solo mode detailed in the back of the almanac. The consensus at BoardGameGeek.com suggests that the optimal number of players is probably three.

Like most of the games we cover here at I Played It, Like, Twice, Tidal Blades comes in a big box with an MSRP of around $50, packed to the gills with tokens, dashboards for characters and islands, cardboard standees featuring attractive character art, and specialty dice, to name just a few of the many contents. That said, because it largely eschews miniatures (unless you backed the Kickstarter for the second chapter at a high enough level), most everything from the first chapter and the Angler’s Cove expansion can be fit into the box without too much difficulty.

At the time of this writing, I haven’t dug into Tidal Blades 2 very much, which advertises itself as a standalone game, albeit one very similar to the original, and featuring the same characters. This time around, you have already completed the Challenges necessary to become Tidal Blades and are working together to protect the Reef from sea monsters and the like.

Ultimately, whether you play Tidal Blades, like, twice (or even once) will depend upon how much you like these kinds of fiddly games filled with tokens and dashboards and dials and so on. But it’s impossible to deny that it looks and feels great, with appealing artwork and an interesting world that provides a welcome alternative to much of the grimdark fantasy stuff out there.

In addition to the games themselves, I picked up the RPG, which uses the patented Cypher system from Monte Cook Games and, frankly, even if I never play it (my eyes are bigger than my stomach when it comes to RPGs, too), I’m looking forward to flipping through the book, reading about the world, and looking at all the pictures.

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Orrin Grey is a writer, editor, game designer, and amateur film scholar who loves to write about monsters, movies, and monster movies. He’s the author of several spooky books, including How to See Ghosts & Other Figments. You can find him online at orringrey.com.