Fantasy Flight Games: ‘Fish With Knives’ – Now I Wish This Was A Real Game
Fantasy Flight Games has another banger April Fools gag and I kinda want this to be a real game now. Time to play Fish With Knives.
Lots (and lots) of companies are out there today tossing out fake products as jokes. It’s a thing on the internet because its April Fools. That said, every now and then, there’s a “fake” product that you see and say, “man, I kinda want that.” Well, Fantasy Flight Games has done that …again.
The first time they got me was the Barkham Horror: The Card Game. That turned out to be such a good “gag” that FFG decided to actually print it! I picked it up and it’s exactly what I wanted out of the game.
It was a gag…until it wasn’t.
Well, now they’ve gone and done it again. This time with a fishy fighting game: Fish With Knives.
via Fantasy Flight Games
“The depths of the ocean—from shining surface to umbral abyss—are entrenched in constant conflict. Unlikely alliances form and dissolve daily in this ever-shifting ecosystem. As leaders of these aquatic battalions, armed to the teeth (or baleen) with various weaponry, you must turn the tides to your favor and vie for control of this incredible—and deadly—underwater kingdom.”
Fish With Knives – A Very Sea-rious game
Okay, so the basics of this game is that 2-4 players are schools of fish fighting over various areas. You can either recruit a fish from the market for food or you can deploy a fish to a zone. The school with the most “fight” in the zone at the end of the round wins the zone and scores the fish bones. Then you deal out a new zone and keep going. There’s also food mechanic and of course there’s bonuses your fish can generate, too. There’s actually a lot going on here. You could say there’s some tactical depth to this one.
I also want to mention that the layout above of the play space looks really clean, too. It’s easy to read and see where you place your fish and which player is playing fish there. The zone card layout is great and I also like how the colors shift to darker blue the lower in depth you go.
Look, I could go on talking about the mechanics of this game. I could talk about the art style and how it’s clean, fishy-fun. But really I just want to mention how it’s a shame this much thought went into this gag and I hope that FFG pulls a “Barkham Horror” here and actually produces this board game. It sounds like a mix of Smash-Up and Dominion. And honestly, that seems like a fantastic idea.
Clearly, someone at FFG thought so, too. And then they got one (or more) of the art team in on the “gag” — and also made a clean looking UI setup for the game. I don’t know how much playtesting or balancing actually went into the game here, but geez…it already feels like this is a product that might actually be a real thing. And be a fun game to boot!
And if you’re like me and starting to wonder if this is still an April Fools joke. The “Official” site link takes you to the April Fools wiki page.
Also “at your local seafood restaurant today!” is pretty on the nose, too.
Could this one turn out to be another “gag-but-wait-that’s-actually-a-good-product” situation? I kinda hope so! Even if it is a little fishy. At least I know what song to queue up for that particular game night.
A little fishy for sure.
