Tidepool Teaparty 2026

Tidepool Teaparty is a solo card game of imagined gatherings. You play a hermit crab who sits in her tidepool as the tide goes out and daydreams of a teaparty: the guests she would welcome, the friends she hopes will come. The forty-card deck holds four families of sea creatures (Urchins, Anemones, Starfish, and Snails), each numbered 1 to 10.

The game is built on the capture mechanics of the traditional card game Cassino. On your turn you take one of three actions: Welcome guests (capture cards from the tidepool that match your played card's value, or that sum to it), Gather (combine cards into a group to welcome on a later turn), or Introduce (place a card into the tidepool). Between your turns the tide takes its own turn, flipping cards and sweeping back out to sea everything it can match or sum to. One card, the Magnificent Starfish, the tide never moves.

At the start of each game you commit to two Afternoon cards, the hermit crab's hopes for who might come: welcome one of every family, gather a run of consecutive guests, host a table of a single kind, and so on. You win the afternoon by bringing both committed hopes true by the time the deck runs out and the tide fully returns. Meet both for a perfect afternoon; meet one and the afternoon was lovely in part.

Beyond a quick drafted Afternoon, the game includes Daydreams, a set of curated challenges arranged across a year of seasons, each pairing two fixed hopes with a harder wish to chase, and some bending a single rule for the day. Optional variants raise the difficulty by committing to three hopes at once or letting the tide turn cards faster.

—description from the designer