Conservas: Exotic Tides

Conservas: Exotic Tides: expanding the solo bag-building experience

Conservas: Exotic Tides is the first expansion for Conservas, the solo bag-building game designed by Scott Almes and published by Salt & Pepper Games. It builds on the core loop of managing a canning business on the Spanish coast: players draw tokens representing their daily catch while leaving enough fish in the bag to let species reproduce. Exotic Tides adds three new fish types, three new boats, and twelve upgrade cards, along with a new Locations feature that alters fishing rules depending on the chosen area. This balance between commercial profit and ecological sustainability, already central to the base game, becomes richer with these new elements, pushing players to adapt their fishing choices scenario by scenario.

Setup and gameplay in Conservas: Exotic Tides

The expansion integrates with the base game components and adds a new market of twelve scenarios, three new boats, twelve upgrade cards, and a new Locations feature. Before each game, players pick a scenario and set up the fishing bag with the corresponding tokens, then follow the usual Conservas phases: heading out to sea to fish, returning to port to sell the catch or invest in upgrades, and letting remaining fish reproduce.

Victory conditions and end of game in Conservas: Exotic Tides

Each scenario in Conservas: Exotic Tides sets a commercial goal to reach within a defined number of turns, along with a sustainability requirement: if a species disappears from the bag, the game can end in failure. The game ends after the last scheduled turn of the scenario or once the failure conditions are met. The expansion offers two difficulty levels for each of its twelve scenarios, allowing players to adjust the challenge based on their experience with the base game.

Stretch goals included in Conservas: Exotic Tides

The crowdfunding campaign for Conservas: Exotic Tides unlocked several stretch goals: three exclusive scenarios (New Year Catch, Sun Carnival, Blue Moon Bazaar), along with premium card sleeves for all of the expansion's cards.