Tranquility

Tranquility (2020) is a silent cooperative card game where you fill in the sea with a grid of Island cards. The challenge comes from having to play cards into the grid in sequence and not being able to talk to each other to coordinate. It's a beautiful game that creates a collaborative Solitaire experience with some novel expansions.

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You work together to complete a large grid with numbered Island cards in sequential order. In turn, you place the numbered Island cards anywhere on the grid but the incremental order must be preserved. You can skip numbers but this comes at a cost of having to discard cards for each number you skip.

Like The Mind, this is a game with a small number of rules that create different imaginative ways to do well. To play efficiently you need to place cards that work with what other players want to play. However, you aren't allowed to communicate what you have in any way. If anyone can't play a card (or have two cards to discard) you lose.

As you progress you discover different strategies to help the group have a good chance of winning. For example, it's often better to leave a gap between the cards you play so the next player can go in between and then choose which number to discard. Thereby losing fewer cards.

Once you have grasped the basic concepts and are beating the game regularly you can add special cards into the deck that add elements you have to work around. This extends the seafaring theme and adds more longevity.

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Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Tranquility 22 months ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 14 months ago.