Fintastic is a simple game with a simple twist that I enjoy

 I found out about Fintastic via the PnP Arcade newsletter. It's an eighteen-card solitaire game that's themed around fishing. And, as simple as it honestly is, it turned out to have more going on than I expected.

In addition to a fisherman card, a fish card, and a reference card, the game is made up of fifteen water cards. Each water card is a two by three grid. The spaces are either blank or have symbols like frogs and cattails on them. (There's a total of six different scoring symbols) One space on each card will always have a fishing bobber on it.

Put down the fisherman card. Put the fish card three card spaces away from it. The cards you used to measure that distance are your starting hand. There, you're ready to play. 

Fintastic is a tile-laying game. You always have to overlap at least one square and you always have to cover up the bobber on the last card. You make a path to the fish. You add the fish card to your hand, which then has a reduced size. You make a path back, same rules, to place the fish card on the fisherman card.

I played a learning game and thought that was pretty easy. Then I looked at the scoring.

I was using the most forgiving scoring chart. Fintastic actually has three different ones, getting (or losing) points depending on symbols being adjacent. You always get a point for lily pads and lose points for cattails and beer cans. In the easy, most forgiving chart, you get a points for swans next to swans, beavers next to cattails and frogs next to lily pads. Learning game? I was in the negatives.

And I was sold on Fintastic. 

A tile laying game where you have to align symbols is nothing new. Micro Rome, for instance, does it very well. Where Fintastic stood out was that you have to go back the way you came. The clever plans that I had on my way to the fish ended up getting covered up on the way back. The only times I've failed to land a fish has been when I was trying to be clever and maximize my score. The challenge isn't completing the board by landing the fish. The challenge is scoring points.

As I mentioned, Fintastic has three different scoring charts that increase in difficulty as they go. There are also alternate starting setups to make your life more complicated. Most games offer different degrees of difficulty and it's nice for Fintastic to do the same.

Look, if you only are looking for only one or two micro tile-laying games in your collection, Fintastic wouldn't be my recommendation. (My recomendations wouldn't be any kind of surprise. They’d be Spawlopolis or Orchard) However, if you are like me and cycle through a lot of them, Fintastic offers enough interesting choices and unusual design choices to see some decent play.

https://doublemonk.itch.io/fintastic