Designed by Vladimír Suchý
Release Year: 2018 Complexity: Medium-High
👥 1-4 Players ⏰ 90-150 min 💸 ~$60 🔗 Buy
Overview
In Underwater Cities, players will manage resources and take actions to expand their network of underwater cities as humanity attempts to combat overpopulation by making the sea habitable. You will take three actions each round, each consisting of selecting an available action on the board while also playing a card from your hand. As long as the color of the card matches the color of the action, you also gain the card’s rewards.
Every few rounds, you will gain resources in the production phase, preparing you to further push your underwater network of cities and buildings forward. After the final production round, the player that gains the most victory points from their cities and end-game scoring cards, added to all the points they scored throughout the game, will be the winner.
Game Feel
The decision-making in Underwater Cities feels incredibly tactical, as you strive to optimize your actions while always playing a matching card. With only three cards in hand—unless you have special abilities—you often find your choices limited. Even if you have cards of each color, you’ll typically find a couple that catch your interest more than others. Balancing which cards to play with the actions available on the board creates a fascinating puzzle.
At the end of each turn, you draw a new card, forcing you to reevaluate your priorities. You might acquire a color you didn't have, unlocking new board actions, or draw a card ability that’s perfect for immediate play. This dynamic means you can’t simply plan your three actions every round; each new card reshapes the puzzle you’re trying to solve.
However, the game still offers plenty of long-term strategy. You’ll consider how to build your personal board—deciding which tunnels to construct and which connection bonuses to pursue. Do you stack multiple buildings of the same type for better resource production, or diversify for optimal end-game scoring? Planning your resource use also plays a big role, as you strategize what you can accomplish before the next production phase. But running through all these strategic considerations is this core thread of tactical adaptability as you strive for efficiency with your cards and actions.
FAQ
Player Counts - We have found 2-3 players to be the sweet spot for Underwater Cities, simply because there can be a lot of downtime with 4 players. There is also a solo mode, but we haven’t tried it ourselves.
Abstract vs. Thematic - On one hand, the theme of using technology to make underwater areas habitable comes through strong and influences a lot of the game design. On the other hand, the entire experience revolves around a color-matching mechanism that is completely arbitrary, and the tactical decisions feel more mechanical than thematic. This balance puts Underwater Cities somewhere in the middle between abstract and thematic.
Luck vs. Skill - This is a heavier strategy game that rewards optimal action efficiency and resource management. So while the card draw introduce a lot of randomness, the outcome is still largely determined by player skill.
Multiplayer Solitaire vs. Highly Interactive - Most of your time is spent thinking about your own puzzle and not worrying about what other players are doing, but there is still interaction in the competition for worker placement spots and sprinkles of other elements such as competing for special cards with endgame scoring or racing to achieve specific goals when using the Government Contracts module.
Short Setup vs. Long Setup - For a big, strategic experience, there isn’t much setup required outside of getting out all the different supplies and shuffling decks. Still, the number of components here will still take a bit to get in their right places.
Easy to Teach vs. Hard to Teach - While most of the systems in Underwater Cities are intuitive with good iconography, this is still a complex strategy game that takes a little while to explain everything in a way that will set new players up for success in their first game.
Low Setup Variability vs. High Setup Variability - Almost all the setup variability is going to come from the randomized hands of cards, which certainly make a bit impact, as well as the randomly drawn special cards. That said, a lot of the variability feels similar and is more about directing small tactical decisions than really changing the trajectory of your strategy from game to game. We will note that the excellent New Discoveries expansion does a great job of increasing this variability with more asymmetrical player boards, unique personal assistants, and varied sets of starting resources.
Things to Like
✅ Satisfying Tactical Card Play - The most fun part of Underwater Cities is navigating the decisions that emerge from trying to match cards to action spaces of the same color. It is a great example of how a mechanical design choice without any thematic justification can elevate a game simply because it is such a fun mechanism. It takes everything that is interesting about worker placement — planning out your actions, prioritizing based on which are likely to get blocked first — and injects a layer of nuance as you try to optimize your cards. Every turn ends with the exciting moment of drawing a new card and seeing if it changes what you think you should do next. There is even a bit of push-your-luck as you can try to keep your colors balanced for more flexibility, or take the risk that you might draw the same color you already have and be really limited in the actions you can take.
✅ Escalating Engine-Building - Underwater Cities, like many card-based engine-building games, offers a satisfying sense of progression as you enhance your production and abilities. With only three production rounds, your advancement is very clear as you notice significant increases in output. There is also a cool mechanism with action cards that trigger when selecting board spaces with the matching icon. Playing more action cards is like creating your own worker placement spot, as those spaces will let you choose any of your action cards to activate. Additionally, if you exceed the action card limit of 4, you are forced to discard one, but are allowed to trigger it one final time. This is just a fun design decision and can even lead to strategies where you churn action cards for extra activations.
✅ Core System Provides a Strong Foundation - All of this optimization and card play feeds into the actual construction of your underwater network of cities, and this core system does a good job of providing interesting tradeoffs, independent of the tactical action selection. You’ll want to consider which placement bonuses to prioritize, and choices you make on building construction have implications on both resource production and final scoring. Other systems, such as the Federation track that provides bonuses and determines player order, or the special cards that can only be acquired through a single action slot, add to the foundation that really allows the variety and tactics of the cards to shine.
Things to Dislike
❌ Production Phase is Error-Prone - It is really satisfying to see how much your production scales as the game progresses, but the actual execution of collecting those resources can start to get really tedious as each player slowly walks through every aspect of their production engine. Since every player typically handles their own production simultaneously, unless you really want the game to run long, there is just a lot of room for error without anyone double-checking the calculations. It is the kind of upkeep that would be nice to leave to a computer, but us mere humans just have to accept that there are probably going to be errors that are going to go unnoticed almost every time you play.
❌ End State Doesn’t Feel Meaningfully Different - There are many games where you build something up throughout the game and then get the satisfaction of looking at the unique thing you’ve built at the end of the game. And while Underwater Cities fits into this category, it also doesn’t have much variation in its end state as your network of cities and buildings will feel roughly the same each game. It’s a small thing, but just don’t expect to go, “wow look at the really unique way I built out my board this game!”
Our Ratings
Ryan (12 Plays) - 9 Daniel (7 Plays) - 9
🎬 Watch Extended Final Thoughts
Is It For You?
If you prefer long-term strategy to constantly changing tactics, are put off by tedious upkeep, or want to avoid a game with downtime between turns, then Underwater Cities may not be for you. 👎
But if you want a heavier, thematic strategy game that is filled with interesting decisions and a satisfying progression, then we have found Underwater Cities to be an excellent choice. 👍